South Australian Surf Forecast (Wed 18th Dec)

South Australian Forecast (issued Wednesday 18th December)

Best Days: Thursday, early Sunday morning for keen surfers

Recap

A slow drop in swell continued across the South Coast yesterday with light morning offshores before a fresh S'ly kicked in, while today the swell is smaller again under morning offshores that have since swung E'ly. The Mid Coast has remained tiny to flat.

This week and weekend (Dec 19 -22)

A slight increase in size is expected tomorrow morning across the state as a small S/SW groundswell fills in. Only a small and inconsistent 2ft wave is expected across most spots, with the odd bigger set at Waits and Parsons. Winds will be favourable all morning, swinging from the N/NE to N/NW ahead of a light and possibly variable sea breeze.

Come Friday the S/SW groundswell will be replaced by a distant and smaller SW groundswell but conditions will be poor with a strengthening S/SE breeze associated with a surface trough moving in from the west. This will favour the Mid Coast, but the surf will be tiny and to 0.5ft.

The trough responsible for Friday's change will kick up a junky but sizey S/SE windswell later Friday down South owing to a fetch of strong S/SE winds being aimed into the coast (pictured right). This swell will then ease slowly Saturday as the trough drifts back to the west slightly and to the south.

Unfortunately winds will persist from the SE Saturday morning, but come Sunday morning a light W'ly is due as a small low pressure centre forms to our south, but there isn't expected to be much swell above 2ft+ across the South Coast.

Next week (Dec 23 onwards)

The surface trough will move back across us early next week and this will see smaller and weaker levels of S'ly swell across the South Coast with unfavourable S'ly winds. Some smaller SW groundswell is on the cards for Christmas Day onwards, but we'll review this Friday.