Victorian Surf Forecast (Fri 20th Dec)

Victoria Forecast (issued Friday 20th December)

Best Days: Sunday morning at exposed spots

Recap

A small but fun increase in inconsistent SW groundswell was seen across the state yesterday, coming in at 3-4ft on the Mornington Peninsula and 2ft around Torquay with 2ft to occasionally 3ft sets at Barwon Heads.

Winds were favourable all morning and into the mid afternoon before shallow sea breezes kicked in.

Today the swell is back to a tiny 1ft+ on the Surf Coast and 2ft+ further east but with a freshening onshore wind there was nowhere to really surf.

This weekend (Dec 21 - 22)

Today's freshening S'ly is associated with a surface trough moving across us and we'll see the strong S'ly winds kick up a weak S'ly windswell for tomorrow to 2ft+ across most spots but with poor SE tending strong E'ly winds.

Come Sunday the trough will drift back to the south-west resulting in winds swinging offshore from the N'th with a mix of weak easing SE windswell from 1-2ft on the Surf Coast, while a small SW groundswell should offer 3ft surf on the Mornington Peninsula. Therefore exposed spots across the state will fair best!

Next week (Dec 23 onwards)

The trough should move back in across us Monday bringing with it a small kick in SW windswell but with onshore winds. Tuesday will see cleaner conditions across the Surf Coast with a morning W/NW'ly but there'll be only a small amount of swell.

There's a fun SW groundswell on the cards for later Christmas Day and into Thursday across the state, but the models are still divergent on the polar low generating this swell (pictured right).

At this stage EC is showing a much better and stronger low producing 3ft of swell for the Surf Coast and 4-6ft waves on the Mornington Peninsula, but GFS and ACCESS have a weaker and less favourably aligned system.

Winds unfortunately look average and onshore for this swell on Thursday, but keep an eye on the model forecasts over the weekend for an idea on if the swell will hit the upper forecast range, and also check back here on Monday for a more detailed outlook.