Western Australia Surf Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Monday 16th December)

Best Days: Wednesday morning, Friday morning Mandurah and Perth, Saturday morning in the South West

Recap

A fun weekend of surf with a good new W/SW groundswell filling in on Saturday, 3-5ft in the morning but pulsing a little more through the day with the swell dropping back from 3-5ft Sunday morning. Mandurah was a fun and clean 2ft+ Saturday, 2ft Sunday with Perth unfortunately coming in mostly tiny.

Today the surf is smaller and with less favourable S/SE winds.

This week and weekend (Dec 17 - 22)

Over the weekend a couple of not overly strong but persistent and back to back mid-latitude storms generated fetches of strong to near gale-force W/SW winds in our western swell windows. The secondary front is now weakening west-southwest of us and dipping south-east, with the swells due to fill in over the coming days.

The first is expected to build through tomorrow afternoon, kicking to 6ft+ across the South West, 2ft to possibly 3ft in Mandurah and 2ft in Perth, smaller in the morning.

The secondary pulse for Wednesday should maintain similar sized surf across Perth and Mandurah, back to 6ft or so across Margs on the sets.

Winds tomorrow morning look OK and from the S/SE but this will be ahead of the swell, strong S/SW into the afternoon with SE-ESE winds on Wednesday morning ahead of W/SW sea breezes.

Thursday will become poor with strengthening W/NW tending W/SW winds as a tight and intense mid-latitude low moves in from the west, bringing a weak increase in W/SW swell for Friday.

Size wise this looks to be around 4-6ft in the South West, 2ft in Mandurah and Perth, with morning S/SE winds to the north of Margs, less favourable and S-S/SW around Margs. These winds will be associated with a trailing front clipping the state into Friday, bringing an additional weak S/SW swell to the coast Saturday.

Fun 4-5ft sets are likely, smaller to the north and to 1-1.5ft as winds improve and swing fresh E/SE ahead of sea breezes.

Following this the surf looks smaller and weaker ahead of a possible good W/SW groundswell into the middle of next week. The source of this swell will be a strong frontal progression forming north of Heard Island on the weekend, but we'll have a closer look at this on Wednesday.