Western Australia Surf Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Friday 18th January)

Best Days: Keen surfers South West swell magnets Saturday morning, protected spots Sunday and Monday morning, keen surfers Tuesday morning in the South West

Recap

Poor onshore surf across the South Coast yesterday with no real swell, cleaner to the north but tiny, while today conditions are much better across Margs with a touch of new swell to 3ft to occasionally 4ft on the magnets. Mandurah was also clean but hanging in at 1-1.5ft.

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This weekend and next week (Jan 19 – 24)

Conditions should be clean again tomorrow morning, but the swell very very inconsistent with a long-range number likely to provide 3ft sets across the South West magnets, tiny to the north.

There's been no change to our large long-period SW groundswell that's due to fill in Sunday and peak through the afternoon.

Satellite observations have recored a good though tight fetch of severe-gale to storm-force W'ly winds moving through our western swell window, with the storm currently south-west of us, generating a good fetch of gale to severe-gale W/SW winds.

We should see the South West build to an easy 6-8ft into Sunday afternoon, if not for the odd bigger clean up set, 2-3ft in Mandurah and 2ft in Perth.

Winds will be OK early and out of the S/SE across the South West E-E/NE to the north in Perth but onshore winds will kick in as the new swell really starts to build.

Monday is still looking average across all locations with a moderate to fresh S'ly breeze and easing levels of groundswell from 6ft+ in the South West, 2ft+ in Mandurah and 1-2ft Perth.

As touched on last update, S/SE winds will be seen into Tuesday as the swell continues to ease, but we're now due to see a mid-latitude low form on the edge of a strong high sitting to our west.

The models are still divergent on where the low will form and what kind of fetch will be aimed into our regions, but we're most likely to see strong onshore winds in some form Wednesday and Thursday with building levels of swell, improving slowly into the weekend.

Beyond this there's nothing significant at all for us so try and make the most of the coming swell, even with the average winds. Have a great weekend!