South Australian Surf Forecast (issued Fri 28th Mar)

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Craig started the topic in Friday, 28 Mar 2014 at 11:00am

South Australian Forecast (issued Friday 28th March)

Best Days: Saturday morning, Sunday morning, mid-late next week winds pending

Recap

A strong and powerful S/SW groundswell filled in yesterday with variable tending offshore winds during the morning, creating clean and glassy conditions. Size wise, Middleton reached an easy 3-4ft, with bigger sets to 6ft reported out at Waits and Parsons.

The swell dropped raidly overnight and smaller but fun 2-3ft waves have been left across Middleton, with the odd bigger one out at Waits. The Mid Coast was tiny yesterday and has remained so into this morning.

This weekend and Monday (Mar 29 - 31)

There's no new swell due over the weekend and as a result wave heights will continue to bottom out leaving the South Coast to become tiny to near flat Monday.

Winds will be good for exposed beaches each morning and variable, with a NE'ly likely to develop Sunday morning, while stiffer N/NE'ly will blow out the surf Monday, so give it a miss.

Next Tuesday onwards (Apr 1 onwards)

From Wednesday onwards we'll enter an active period of swell as a node of the Long Wave Trough sitting over the Bight starts to strengthen and intensify.

This will effectively steer front after front up from the Southern Ocean towards us (pictured right), and as the LWT strengthens, so will the strength of the fronts as they feed off it.

A period of medium sized S/SW groundswell is due from Wednesday through until the following Wednesday with a couple of larger pulses on the cards for the weekend.

Winds unfortunately will be onshore through most of the period and from the S'th, but without too much strength. There should be periods of variable and more favourable local offshores, but it's too early to pick these.

The size on the Mid Coast will be limited by the swell direction, but we should see consistent 1ft waves with a couple of bigger days in the mix working around the tide.

Check back here on Monday for a much clearer idea on the winds and size of the pulses due next week.