West Australian Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Tuesday 26th June)

Best Days: Friday: Moderate, easing swells in Margs with offshore winds. Only small in Perth/Mandurah. 

Recap: Steadily easing surf from Sunday onwards, with winds now gusty from the north-west down south and north across Perth as wave heights reach a low point across all regions. 

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This week, weekend and next week (Jun 27 onwards)

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Note: Today’s Forecaster Notes will be brief, as Craig is away on annual leave. Also, these Forecaster Notes will be updated Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays for the next few weeks.

Still nothing special expected this week.

A front with an attached low is barreling towards our state but it’s a relatively small system with a short, narrow fetch, and most of the swell it's generating will be accompanied by onshore winds. In fact, the front will arrive early tomorrow morning but the groundswell trailing this system will arrive on Thursday, when onshore winds start to ease (though slightly reinforced by a secondary front). 

We’ll see bumpy, wind affected 6-8ft sets across open beaches in the Margs region on Thursday but it’ll be a little too small for any notable quality inside protected bays and points. 

Winds across the Perth and (possibly) Mandurah stretch should swing S/SE early Thursday allowing conditions to slowly clean up from Wednesday’s onshores - though it won’t be anything special. Surf size should build to 2-3ft across the Perth stretch and maybe 3-4ft in Mandurah but on the whole it’s not worth getting too excited about.

Size will then ease through Friday with winds tending light E/NE in all regions - this is probably the pick of the period as we'll have the best conditions, though size will be only borderline surfable across metro beaches.

Small (Margs) to tiny (Perth) surf is then expected over the weekend with strengthening N’ly winds.

The synoptics won’t redevelop in a favourable way for us until the weekend, when polar low to the south of Heard Island is expected to merge with a mid-latitude low immediately north, forming an impressive system in our mid range swell window.

Unfortunately, a strong high concurrently ridging in from the west early next week will drive strong S/SW winds across the region as the swell reaches a peak but we should be looking at 8ft+ surf at exposed spots down south with small clean waves inside sheltered corners (maybe a little more size if the models upgrade the strength of the fetch.. right now it's expected to become broad, not not overly strong). There’ll be stacks of swell across the Perth and Mandurah coasts too though conditions don’t look very flash.

Long term, the charts are shaping up to deliver a series of large swells through the latter part of next week and the following weekend. More on that in Thursday’s update.