Western Australia Surf Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Friday 26th May)

Best Days: Protected spots in the South West Saturday, Perth Saturday, both regions Sunday and Monday, early Tuesday

Recap

Large surf but with onshore winds across the South West yesterday, while Perth and Manudrah saw clean 3ft sets.

Today the swell dropped back to the 6ft+ range with S/SW winds across the South West while Perth and Mandurah held around 2ft with lumpy but cleaner conditions under light winds.

A strong new groundswell due this afternoon has since kicked in across the South West, providing large 8ft+ waves at exposed breaks but with strong S/SW winds.

This weekend and next week (May 27 – Jun 2)

This afternoon's increase in swell is a little ahead of schedule and the size a bit more than expected. With this I'm not expecting too much extra size tomorrow morning, with the South West likely to ease from the 8ft+ range, with 2-3ft sets to the north.

Conditions will clean up around protected spots in the South West with a S/SE breeze, while to the north, SE breezes will favour most spots.

Sunday looks great with offshore E/NE winds and a further drop in size from 4-6ft and 1-2ft respectively.

Monday's new SW groundswell is still on track, generated by a broad and elongated fetch of gale to severe-gale pre-frontal W/NW winds moving through the southern Indian Ocean.

The swell is expected to be in at dawn now, peaking through the day to a solid 6ft to occasionally 8ft in the South West, and 2ft further north.

Conditions are looking good with an E/SE offshore, persisting most of the day, while early Tuesday should be a similar size, easing off slowly into the afternoon with early NE tending N'ly winds.

For the rest of the week we've got plenty more swell on the cards as a series of strong fronts fire up between us and Heard Island.

The first system firing up this weekend is due to generate a W/SW groundswell for Wednesday afternoon, likely to the 8ft range in the South West, and 2ft+ in Perth, but as average N'ly winds continue.

An even stronger storm forming at more polar latitudes early next week looks to generate a large and powerful SW groundswell for Saturday, but again winds look to be an issue and will mostly likely be onshore. We'll take a closer look at this Monday though. Have a great weekend!