WSL Finals, Fiji
August 27th - September 4th

In the run up to Finals Day we'll be offering a thrice-weekly Cloudbreak forecast this week: on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and then each day next week till the one-day events runs.

Over the last fortnight, Fiji has gone through a quiet spell with few waves of note on the south-west facing reefs. It's not for a lack of action in the Southern Ocean - Victoria and Tahiti, for instance, have been getting bombarded by Southern Ocean storms - but it's got everything to do with alignment.

Cloudbreak only has one real swell window and it opens up to the south-west, across the Coral Sea, Tasman Sea, and beyond that the Southern Ocean. Any storm that's going to create swell will have to be angling up the Tasman towards Fiji.

The current set up has Southern Ocean storms pushing swells north-east towards South Australia and Victoria, while the storms in Fiji's swell window have been pushing swell south-east towards the ice shelf - see the next image for an example.

Keen weather watchers would understand this as a classic Long Wave Trough scenario - click here for an explanation.

What this means is that the lead up to Finals Day will see few warm up waves on the reefs. There are, however, some exceptions.

Tomorrow a low centred near NZ's southern tip will deepen as it moves up the west coast, creating a south-southwest swell of moderate period. This will hit late on the 21st in the 6-8ft range.

That swell will be followed by a longer period swell off the storm shown in the image above. It's poorly aligned for Cloudbreak yet vigorous enough to push sideband energy up the Tasman where it'll deliver inconsistent 6ft waves hitting late on the 23rd.

Following that, the reefs will go quiet.

A series of fronts will pass across southern Australia, yet as they approach the Tasman they're all forecast to fall away, fading in strength and sending any available swell south-east, away from the tropics.

So quiet will Fiji be during this period that on the 27th - the first day of the waiting period - the predominant swell is forecast to be south-east. A short period trade-swell kicked up by the south-east trade-winds.

The first four days of the waiting period - from Wednesday 27th to Saturday 30th - will see very small waves. Only small, inconsistent long period energy will be able to escape the tractor beam that's pulling it away from Cloudbreak.

The back half of the waiting period is still too far out to have much trust in the forecast though there are hints of southerly energy developing in the Tasman. At this stage it looks slightly disjointed though we'll keep an eye on any changes.

See you all on Wednesday.