Victorian Surf Forecast (issued Fri 11th Apr)

Victoria Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Wednesday 11th April)

Best Days: Wednesday and Thursday

Recap

The Mornington Peninsula provided the best waves yesterday with a small but fun swell to 2-3ft with all day offshores. The Surf Coast was tiny but ideal for beginners on the beaches.

Today a deepening surface trough is moving across the region, bringing strengthening onshore winds and a building S'ly windswell and no real options for a quality wave.

This weekend (Apr 12 - 13)

The surface trough moving across us today will deepen into an intense Tasman Low off the Gippsland region this evening and with this we'll see winds swinging SE through Bass Strait. This will kick up a junky SE windswell across the Surf Coast tomorrow to 2-3ft or so and with strong E/SE winds, with the swell expected to ease Sunday as the low pushes north resulting in winds relaxing from the SE.

The Mornington Peninsula won't see much of this SE windswell, with a long-range SW groundswell expected to reach 4ft into Saturday afternoon before easing from 3ft+ or so Sunday. Protected locations will be the go all weekend east of Melbourne.

Next week onwards ( Apr 14 onwards)

Give the surf a miss Monday as we'll reach a low point in swell activity with light SE winds.

Into Tuesday we should see a new W/SW groundswell pushing in, generated by a strong but unfavourably tracking mid-latitude front pushing from under WA down towards Tassie over the weekend.

The east-southeast track will limit any major size being generated, but a medium sized increase in swell should still be seen Tuesday to 2-3ft on the Surf Coast and 4-6ft on the Mornington Peninsula.

A secondary pulse of SW swell is then due Wednesday as a polar front of similar strength fires up on the tail of the initial front linked to Tuesday's swell, but at a more favourable position in our swell window, to our south-west.

This swell should keep 2-3ft waves hitting the Surf Coast through Wednesday before easing off steadily through Thursday.

Conditions on Tuesday will remain less than perfect with a light to moderate SE'ly during the morning, but Wednesday looks great across both coasts with early N/NE winds expected to swing N/NW during the day and then back to the E/NE into the afternoon.

Thursday will be best at the western end of the Mornington Peninsula and across the Surf Coast with all day N/NW winds.

The longer term outlook is finally coming together with a node of the Long Wave Trough expected to intensify across the South West of WA mid-late next week.

This should steer a series of broad and vigorous cold fronts up through our western swell window during next week (illustrated right), generating at least one large pulse of W/SW groundswell for the Easter Long Weekend (Saturday and Sunday). Sit tight though and check back for an update on Monday regarding this swell.