Back Beach Surf Forecast and Surf Report

Righto, listen up. Rusty here.

It’s a bit of a wild ride ahead for Back Beach. We’ve got a massive pulse of south-west groundswell hitting, but the problem is it’s just too damn big for most of us for days. The water’s sitting at about 65°, which is pretty normal for this time of year, so no shocks there.

The first real look we get is Wednesday afternoon, September 2nd. Swell is 8 ft from the WSW with a solid 14-second period, but the wind is a light cross-onshore, making it a bit bumpy. The water’s got a lot of energy behind it, but it’s just marginal. Honestly, not worth paddling out for.

Things go haywire from Thursday, September 3rd, onwards. We see a 10 ft to 13 ft WSW swell with periods hitting 15 to 17 seconds – that’s proper groundswell. The combined energy is huge. But this is a beach break, and that much power on a straight beach is going to be a washing machine. Too big for beginners for sure, and even for experts, the wind is mostly onshore or cross-shore and strong, turning it into a complete mess. Friday the 4th has some clean-ish windows early, but the swell is 12 ft – only for the brave and the stupid.

There’s a long gap of poor conditions right through until Wednesday, September 9th. You’re looking at nearly a week of mostly junk. Saturday the 5th sees gale-force winds. Sunday the 6th is howling. It’s not until the morning of Wednesday the 9th that we get a tiny glimmer: the swell drops to 8 ft, the period is still a long 16 seconds from the WSW, and we finally get clean, cross-offshore winds from the east. The energy is still hefty, so it’ll be hollow, but with clean conditions, the sets might be makeable for someone with experience.

The standout, if you can call it that, would be the morning of Thursday, September 10th. The swell backs down to 6 ft from the WSW at 15 seconds, with a light northerly cross-off wind. The energy drops to a much more manageable level. This is the only window in the whole run that sounds like it could be fun for a solid intermediate surfer. It still won't be easy, but it's clean.

After that, it’s back to lumpy, choppy, and onshore for most of the second week. The windows on the 16th and 17th of September see the swell drop a little more to 6 ft, but the wind turns onshore again or the conditions are just marginal. Honestly, for the whole 16-day stretch, the Thursday morning of the 10th is the one to circle on the calendar. Everything else is either too big, too windy, or both.

Rusty.

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