Victorian Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Friday 25th January)

Best Days: Surf Coast Sunday, both coasts Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning

Recap

Fun waves on the beaches to the east of Melbourne yesterday with easing surf from 3ft range on the sets across the Mornington Peninsula and Phillip Island, small, weak and peaky on the Surf Coast.

This morning the swell has dropped right back leaving tiny waves across most spots (1-2ft Mornington Peninsula) with a hot and freshening northerly breeze. We’ll see a cooler onshore change early-mid afternoon so try and stay cool until then.

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

This weekend and next week (Jan 26 – Feb 1)

The weekend will start poor, with no real size tomorrow morning and onshore SW winds across most locations. There’s an outside chance for lighter W/SW breezes around Torqua,y but the swell small to tiny.

Into the afternoon we should see our new long-period and inconsistent SW groundswell filling in, generated earlier this week in our far swell window. The Surf Coast should build to an inconsistent 3ft, if not for the odd sneaky bigger one near dark, with 4-5ft+ sets on the Mornington Peninsula. Winds won’t be too bad and only moderate out of the S’th so there should be some OK options for keen surfers.

Sunday is the day to surf though as the swell starts easing from 3ft and 4-5ft respectively under a light to moderate W/NW-NW offshore, freshening out of the W/SW-SW into the afternoon.

All in all though this swell will be the worst of the bunch for the coming period due to the lack of consistency.

Moving into next week and our good run of W/SW mid-period tending groundswell is on track, with an upgrade in size for the best pulse. The catalyst for this swell event will be a strong node of the Long Wave Trough moving in very slowly from the west from this evening.

With this we’ll see an initial relatively weak polar front project up towards WA and the under the Bight, generating strong W/SW winds. A fun mid-period W/SW swell will be generated by this front alone, but a stronger mid-latitude front will race in on top of the active sea state and generate an additional fetch of W/SW gales Saturday afternoon through Sunday.

This will boost the size and strength of the swell due on Monday, with the mid-period energy arriving just ahead of the groundswell into the afternoon.

We should see the Surf Coast building from 3ft in the morning, more to 4ft into the afternoon (if not for the odd bigger one at magnets), with building surf to 6ft+ on the Mornington Peninsula.

On the backside of these initial fronts a much stronger mid-latitude storm will develop, forming into a deep low resulting in a fetch of severe-gale W/NW winds moving through our swell window with core winds reaching storm-force (pictured right).

A larger long-period W/SW groundswell will be generated, filling in Tuesday afternoon and building to 4-5ft+ late on the Surf Coast and 6-8ft on the Mornington Peninsula.

Wednesday looks a touch smaller with the swell fading through the end of the week.

Looking at the local winds and Monday looks great with variable tending locally offshore winds, giving into S’ly sea breezes, similar Tuesday though with a touch more NE tendency.

Wednesday looks similar again, though we’ll review this on Monday. So all in all there should be real good quality waves on offer across the state from Sunday. Have a great weekend!