Victoria Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Wednesday 10th October)

Best Days: Beaches Friday mid-morning through early afternoon, Saturday morning swell magnets

Recap

Light winds early on the Surf Coast yesterday with clean conditions best suited to the beaches with a drop in swell ahead of the onshore change. The Mornington Peninsula was a bit hit and miss, while Phillip Island also offered a good window of clean conditions on the beaches.

Today we've got poor conditions across all locations with a strong E/SE wind and building SE windswell.

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This week and next (Oct 11 - 19)

Currently we've got a strong high sitting south-west of us, squeezed by an inland surface trough and cold front pushing up the southern NSW coast.

We'll see winds take a little longer to improve over the coming days as the high tries to muscle in as the inland trough resists.

With his poor and fresh E/SE winds are due to continue through tomorrow with easing levels of SE windswell owing to winds through Bass Strait relaxing and tending more easterly.

The Surf Coast is expected to ease from a junky 3ft, with a weak mid-period S/SW swell across the Mornington Peninsula to 3ft+, also easing through the day.

On Friday conditions should improve across the beaches through the morning, best late morning and into the middle of the day with a moderate to fresh E/NE tending NE breeze, tending E/SE-SE mid-late afternoon.

Our new SW groundswell is still on track for Friday afternoon, but the intense and tight polar low is looking a little smaller in scope than forecast on Monday.

With this I'd be confident on sets reaching an inconsistent 3ft on the Surf Coast magnets through the afternoon, but less so on the '+' put in Monday's forecast. The Mornington Peninsula should reach 4-5ft. The morning will be smaller.

Saturday will be clean all day across the beaches with a N/NE offshore as the groundswell eases from a more S/SW direction, with small fading 2ft to maybe 3ft sets on the Surf Coast swell magnets, 3-4ft to the east.

Come Sunday the Surf Coast will be tiny and the Mornington Peninsula not far off it with possibly the odd leftover 1-2ft set with fresh NE winds.

There’s no new swell due until mid-late next week and this is due to the large slow moving high blocking any major frontal systems away from us from today through the weekend and early next week before another strong high moves in later next week to replace it.

The swell due mid-late next week will be long-range and inconsistent W/SW groundswell energy from a series of strong fronts pushing up from the Indian Ocean towards Western Australia.

A very small pulse of W/SW swell is due on Tuesday ahead of a better increase Thursday but to no real major size. More on this Friday.