Fun weekend, good south swell for Tuesday
Victoria Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Friday 26th August)
Best Days: Surf Coast Saturday, Sunday both coasts, Monday morning east of Melbourne, Tuesday beaches, Wednesday morning Surf Coast
Recap
Average conditions yesterday across the Mornington Peninsula with an onshore wind from dawn, while the Surf Coast was workable with a light to moderate W/SW breeze and 2ft of swell before the fresher SW'ly hit.
Today a new inconsistent SW groundswell has come in with clean 2-3ft sets on the Surf Coast, improving as the tide drops and bumpy 3-5ft waves on the Mornington Peninsula.
This weekend (Aug 27 - 28)
The weekend will be fun across both coasts at stages, Surf Coast Saturday and Sunday and then on the Mornington Peninsula and Phillip Island Sunday.
Today's inconsistent SW groundswell is expected to drop back a touch into tomorrow, with a new reinforcing W/SW groundswell due through the afternoon, with a better SW pulse for Sunday morning.
This has been and is continuing to be generated by a relatively weak but favourably tracking pre-frontal fetch of W/NW winds and post-frontal W/SW winds.
The Surf Coast should hold between 2ft to occasionally 3ft at swell magnets tomorrow, kicking a bit stronger to 3ft Sunday morning. The Mornington Peninsula should see 3-5ft sets continuing tomorrow, a bit stronger to 4-5ft+ Sunday morning.
A N/NW tending NW wind will favour the Surf Coast all day tomorrow (selected spots to the east), with local offshore winds Sunday persisting most of the day.
Next week onwards (Aug 29 onwards)
Easing surf with N/NE winds will favour locations east of Melbourne on Monday, dropping from 2ft to possibly 3ft on the Surf Coast and 3-5ft on the Mornington Peninsula.
Our strong pulse of S/SW groundswell for early next week has now been shifted to Tuesday, with a vigorous polar low expected to fire up in our southern swell window Saturday afternoon, generating a fast moving fetch of severe-gale to storm-force W/SW winds along the polar shelf Sunday.
The low is moving at little too quick to be ideal, but we'll see a strong S/SW groundswell pulse for Tuesday, kicking to 3-4ft+ on the Surf Coast and 5-6ft on the Mornington Peninsula during the morning (smaller at dawn).
Persistent N/NE winds will continue to favour locations east of Melbourne Tuesday and the beaches on the Surf Coast.
Tuesday's swell will fade quickly into Wednesday as winds swing to the NW.
Into Thursday though a mix of very inconsistent long-range W/SW groundswell energy, with a better more consistent SW swell is due.
The long-range has and is being generated by a strong polar low firing up in our far far swell window south-east of South Africa.
The remnants of this storm will re-intensify around the Heard Island region, projecting a tight fetch of severe-gale to storm-force W/NW winds through our south-western swell window towards the polar shelf.
Both swells are due to peak Thursday morning and our models are incorrectly combining the two and over-forecasting the size. We're probably looking at inconsistent 3ft sets on the Surf Coast, possibly a touch bigger, with 4-6ft sets on the Mornington Peninsula. More on this Monday. Have a great weekend!
Comments
Some nice lines pushing through at Torquay this morning.
Hey why isnt the automated models picking up the Sly swell for Tuesday as much as predicted ?
Thanks, hope everyone is having a good weekend yew
What do you mean "not as much as predicted"? Do you mean the predicted "surf size" by the model? Or do you mean the model's estimate of the swell train (0.3m @ 22 seconds etc)?
Either, Craig estimated a 3-4ft+ S swell for tuesday but the swell train is picking up a primary swell of 1.7m SW swell and the 'surf size' is 2-3ft (for SC). This seems new as up until a couple days ago there wasn't a swell coming Tuesday ... I guess we'll see on tomorrow's notes
Looks like another downgrade on that swell Superfish, and the models aren't picking up the signal very well.
If your lucky someone will answer your question sfish ? Southerly swell is hidden below the west so its not showing . But if you know then you know
Oh man, it's looking good in Torquay this morning.
https://www.swellnet.com/surfcams/torquay
See supfish your lucky ! . I ask a sensible question on Thursday - no reply , case not heard . Bens right tho wtf do u even mean
Sorry mate we must have missed you Q. Where is it?
Right in front of everyones eyes since thurs night its been on display ben .
Yea interesting stuff are you talking about a spike in period but a decrease in swell ? I see it happen on exposed coasts a lot, maybe to do with a reinforcing long distance swell ... feel like although swell is not bigger it is thicker and powerful.
No one answered my question about Western Boundary Currents either ..... anyone care to help ?
No im not superfish . Craig & I continued to discuss things privately about my query . If you looked at thurs 9am you could see it . If I could post pics I would do so with examples of the period spike/dips
Ah will get back to current question tomorrow. And yeah Cam and I discussed. Basically it's when a current swell is on the ease, with peak and average periods slowly easing, while a new trace of weak swell starts showing on the charts, with peak periods jumping up and down. This continues until the new swell becomes the more dominant and peak period holds high. Average period would also increase unless there was windswell contamination.
It was actually thurs am spike tho when not predicted anywhere & was a sneaky spike
How about posting the pics I sent you craig
Here it is Cam..
Ok there it is and im talking about before 12:00 not after . After 12:00 is very normal & I am not puzzled by that at all . If anyone was watching they would have noticed that there was nothing on any forecast site for a period increse until mid arvo . That hit before 9 am so I pointed out a sneaker pulse , nobody else took any notice & its a bit too late to talk about it now . But it was perhaps a rare time that the ocean throws up a little extra
Forecast for 3' today, turned out being 4' to 5' with some bigger sets at Bells. Not complaining, brought the step up just in case and crowds were pretty good this morning early due to the high tide.
Nice options this morning...