South Australian Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Monday 9th September)

Best Days: South Coast tomorrow morning, possibly Mid Coast late, South Coast Wednesday, South Coast Thursday, Friday and Saturday mornings

Recap

Not too flash Saturday across the South Coast with bumpy conditions and a drop in swell, much better Sunday with a new S/SW groundswell and offshore winds, providing good options from Middleton to Waits. The Mid Coast was bumpy and choppy all weekend with small surf.

Today another front has clipped the state creating poor conditions down South, cleaner on the Mid but tiny.

Just a heads up for those around Middleton Bay and along the South Coast, there have been multiple stolen cars and cars broken into over the past fortnight. So be vigliant in regards to where you hide your keys and be aware of who's around.

Today’s Forecaster Notes are brought to you by Rip Curl

This week and weekend (Sep 10 - 15)

We've got a great week of surf ahead, with Wednesday likely to provide the most size and best waves.

Tomorrow we'll see a mix of easing weak S/SW swell and very inconsistent long-range W/SW groundswell from a significant storm in the southern Indian Ocean last week. The models are incorrectly combining these swells and over-forecasting the size from midday tomorrow, but what we should see is inconsistent sets to 4ft off Middleton into the afternoon, 2ft on the sets across the Mid Coast.

The morning is likely to be smaller and 2-3ft off Middleton. Winds look good and locally offshore across both regions in the morning ahead of sea breezes, back to the S/SE-SE late on the Mid.

Our new long-period SW groundswell for Wednesday is still on track, along with a secondary pulse for Thursday.

The low generating this swell is currently south of WA, producing a tight fetch of severe-gale to storm-force W'ly winds in our south-western swell window (picked up well by satellite as shown).

The low will maintain a severe-gale fetch while tracking east before passing under Tasmania tomorrow morning out of our swell window.

The groundswell should arrive early Wednesday morning and peak through the day to a strong 4ft off Middleton (if not for the odd bigger cleanup), The Mid Coast won't see any size from this low, with fading groundswell from 1ft to maybe 2ft on the favourable parts of the tide.

Winds look excellent and moderate to fresh from the N/NE tending N/NW down South, N/NE-N on the Mid Coast.

A secondary slightly smaller SW groundswell is due on Thursday, generated by a secondary slightly bigger and similar strength low, but it will track less favourably east-southeast through our swell window.

Middleton should still see 4ft sets, but be mostly around 3-4ft, easing later in the day and then dropping back from 3ft Friday morning. The Mid Coast is expected to become tiny as the swell fades.

Conditions will be best Thursday morning with a dawn NW breeze, shifting W/NW ahead of an afternoon SW change, with Friday playing out similar.

The front linked to Thursday's change is expected to produce a small mid-period SW swell for Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, only to 2-3ft off Middleton and it looks like winds will be light and tending locally offshore through the morning.

Longer term a slow and significant frontal progression moving through the southern Indian Ocean should generate an inconsistent W/SW groundswell for Sunday/Monday with N'ly winds on the former and a S/SE change on the later. The models diverge a little on fronts moving through over the weekend so we'll have to look at this in more detail Wednesday.