Large onshore surf developing

Craig Brokensha picture
Craig Brokensha (Craig)

Western Australia Surf Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Wednesday 30th October)

Best Days: Perth and Mandurah Sunday morning, the South West Monday morning

Recap

Really fun clean waves across all locations yesterday morning with a drop in swell back to 6ft in the South West, 2-3ft in Mandurah and 2ft across Perth.

Today at dawn there was a window of lighter winds and clean conditions with smaller surf, but stronger onshore winds kicked in quickly thereafter.

This week and weekend (Oct 31 – Nov 3)

I hope you made the most of yesterday's waves and possibly the dawny today as we've got onshore winds and large windy swells from now through most of the weekend.

A strong mid-latitude frontal progression is developing directly west-southwest of us, and we'll see a broad fetch of strong W/SW winds projected into us tomorrow, with a slight intensification to near gale-force from a secondary front on Friday.

This will generate large and messy amounts of mid-period W/SW-SW swell for tomorrow (mixed in with a long-period SW groundswell), peaking Friday when the strongest front comes through.

Conditions will be poor though with strong W-W/SW winds on Thursday, W/SW tending SW on Friday.

Size wise, the South West should peak Friday to 8-10ft in the South West through the afternoon, 3-4ft in Mandurah and 3ft+ in Perth from tomorrow.

The swell should ease into the weekend and unfortunately winds will remain onshore and strong from the SW Saturday, backing off later in the day.

Sunday morning will remain onshore in the South West with a moderate S/SW breeze cleaner to the north with E/SE offshores.

We'll likely still see 2-3ft sets across Mandurah, 2ft+ in Perth with bumpy 6ft waves across the South West.

Monday morning is looking a little dicey in the South West as the surf continues to ease and becomes small with a morning variable breeze. Perth and Mandurah look small to tiny.

Longer term a fun new W/SW groundswell is likely Tuesday/Wednesday, generated by a tight mid-latitude low dipping east-southeast through the Indian Ocean. We may see a small 4-5ft+ wave across the South West Wednesday when it peaks with favourable winds, but we'll have a closer look at this on Friday.