Western Australia Surf Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Monday 28th October)

Best Days: Tuesday morning, Sunday morning Perth and Mandurah

Recap

A small and clean start to the weekend ahead of a large and powerful groundswell filling in yesterday under morning offshore winds. The South West kicked to 10-12ft+ with pumping conditions, 3-4ft in Mandurah yesterday morning and 3ft in Perth.

Today the swell was still large but on the ease with onshore winds.

This weekend and next week (Oct 29 – Nov 3)

It's good to be back again, though coming in a little cold in respect to the coming swells this week.

The main thing is that we'll see the surf continue to drop in size tomorrow but clean back up before we move into a run of onshore winds from Wednesday through the weekend.

A morning E/SE breeze will create clean conditions across the South West, E/NE further north, with the swell dropping back further from the 6ft range across the South West, 2ft+ in Mandurah and 2ft in Perth.

From Wednesday a series of relatively weak but persistent mid-latitude fronts will push up and across us, bringing onshore winds but no real considerable sizey swell. This is linked to a strong negative Southern Annular Mode, which is linked to the Sudden Stratospheric Warming Event a couple of months ago..

There will be a long-period SW groundswell in the mix though, arriving late Wednesday and peaking Thursday morning, generated by a tight but intense polar low that's currently around Heard Island.

A fetch of severe-gale to storm-force winds have been picked up by satellite and we'll see the low weaken while moving towards us tomorrow, then bringing the onshore winds Wednesday.

Early Wednesday we may see a dawn N'ly but there'll be no new swell and winds will quickly shift N/NW and strengthen.

The SW groundswell for Thursday should peak around 6-8ft but there'll also be a similar sized mid-period swell in the mix along with strong W/NW tending W/SW winds. Perth and Mandurah look to come in at a messy and stormy 3ft or so.

The mid-period energy will persist through Friday around a similar size as the groundswell eases and fresh W/SW tending stronger W'ly winds move in.

It looks like we'll see the mid-latitude frontal activity starting to push east and away on the weekend, though lingering fronts will keep conditions poor.

A fresh SW breeze is due Saturday as the swell drops slowly, smaller again Sunday with a lingering SW breeze. Further north, Perth and Mandurah should be cleaner Sunday morning with an offshore wind and easing surf from around 2ft+.

Monday morning should become cleaner but the swell will be smaller across the South West.

Longer term a fun new SW swell is likely mid-late next week across the state, but we'll have a closer look at this on Wednesday.