Victorian Surf Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Monday 17th February)

Victoria Forecast (issued Monday 17th February)

Best Days: Tuesday morning east of Melbourne, Thursday and Friday mornings around Torquay, 

Recap

A funky surface trough with a couple of smaller scale embedded lows moved across the region Saturday as a new SW groundswell peaked with light onshores on the Surf Coast and offshore NE winds along the Mornington Peninsula providing great waves up until the early afternoon.

The trough moved east through the afternoon bringing onshores which strengthened into Sunday as the swell eased.

Today small waves have persisted across both coasts with variable winds as another weak surface trough moves across the region.

This week (Feb 17 - 21)

Today's small reinforcing swell is expected to ease into tomorrow as winds swing go funky as yet another surface trough moves in from the west. The Mornington Peninsula will fare best with the small amount of swell and light E/NE winds during the morning ahead of a shift to the S/SW during the afternoon. So surf before lunch.

Give the surf a miss on Wednesday as there'll be no real swell leftover and winds will only be good for the Surf Coast early ahead of a strong SW change.

The end of the week will become quite complex as we see a mix of new SW groundswell arriving Thursday from a strong polar front that's currently well south of WA, mixed in with a bigger S/SW swell generated by a deep mid-latitude low stalling over Tassie.

Looking at the low in more detail, and this system will form as a result of an inland surface trough drifting south-east from SA across us, combining with a pool of cold air in the upper atmosphere sitting above Tasmania.

A deep and powerful mid-latitude low will form and stall over Tassie through Thursday and Friday with a fetch of strong to gale-force S/SW winds just falling within our swell window (pictured right).

If this low shifts a touch more east than currently forecast we won't see much size at all and only the SW swell from the polar front. So we'll have to keep a close eye on the forecast updates over the coming days.

Winds for the most part will unfortunately be onshore across the Victorian coast, but the Surf Coast should see morning W'ly winds Thursday and Friday morning under local steering effects.

The way in which winds feed in towards a low pressure systems centre rather than push out (as when looking at the circulation around a high) will also help this cause around Torquay.

This weekend onwards (Feb 22nd onwards)

The swell from the low will dip sharply into the start of the weekend as it shifts off to the east and out of our swell window, and winds will become poor and from the S'th favouring nowhere.

Some fun SW groundswell is then due into Sunday and Monday though generated by some strong polar frontal activity in our far swell window that will then move closer towards us into the end of the week but overall weaken. Winds are looking a little dicey still with light onshores, but we'll review this again Wednesday.