Victoria Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Monday 4th January)

Best Days: Saturday morning keen surfers, Sunday morning

Recap

Fresh to strong onshore winds all weekend with an easing SW groundswell Saturday and building SE windswell through Sunday.

Today the windswell is continuing in the 3ft range on the Surf Coast with fresh onshore winds, while the Mornington Peninsula is a weak and bumpy 2-3ft or so.

This week (Jan 5 – Jan 8)

As touched on last week, onshore winds and no decent swell are due to write-off basically the entire week of surfing across Victoria.

An inland surface trough is sitting just to our north-west and will remain so for the next couple of days before drifting more east towards the end of the week.

What this will do is result in persistent onshore winds, fresh from the E/SE tomorrow, tending clockwise to the SE Wednesday and then S/SW Thursday and Friday.

With this swing in wind direction the SE windswell across the Surf Coast should start to ease, back from 2-3ft or so tomorrow morning, down from 2ft Wednesday.

The Mornington Peninsula will be small tomorrow morning ahead of a slight kick in SW groundswell through the afternoon likely to an inconsistent 3ft to occasionally 4ft, dropping back to more 3ft Wednesday. Conditions will be poor though and far from inspiring.

Into Thursday afternoon and Friday a new long-range SW groundswell is due, generated in our far swell window through the southern Indian Ocean.

The polar low generating the swell was quite strong, but we'll see a lot of swell decay due as it heads towards us.

The Surf Coast should build to an inconsistent 2ft+ later Thursday and ease from a similar size Friday morning, with 4-5ft sets on the Mornington Peninsula.

With lighter S/SW winds Friday will create OK conditions for keen surfers, but keep your expectations low.

This weekend onwards (Jan 9 onwards)

Conditions will become slowly better through the weekend with a lighter and possibly variable S'ly breeze on Saturday and a new SW groundswell.

This groundswell will be generated by a good pre-frontal fetch of W/NW gales south of WA and then south-west of Tasmania through this week, providing fun 2-3ft sets on the Surf Coast and 4-5ft+ waves on the Mornington Peninsula, easing back through Sunday.

Finally offshore N'ly winds are due as the swell eases Sunday so at this stage this looks like the best day to surf over the coming period!