Panoramas Surf Forecast and Surf Report

G’day, it’s Rusty here. I’ve been staring at the charts for the next couple of weeks, and I’ve got to be straight with you: it’s not looking like a classic stretch for our stretch of coast. We’ve got a solid run of small, wind-affected waves that are going to keep the lineup pretty quiet, but there’s barely anything that gets the heart rate up. The first proper window is on Thursday, August 6th, and that’s honestly the best of a fairly ordinary bunch early on.

Thursday morning, August 6th is where you want to be. Panoramas is showing a small but clean 3ft of swell, and with the breeze dropping to glassy, it’s going to be the most user-friendly it gets for a while. The swell energy is weak, reading 100 in the brackets, so expect soft, mushy shoulders more than any real punch. The water temp is sitting at 75°, which is a whopping 5° warmer than usual for this time of year – that’s seriously unusual, so you can leave the booties at home.

After that, the pattern gets scrappy. The wind kicks up from the west-northwest in the afternoons, ruffling the surface and making the small swell feel even more frustrating. Saturday morning, August 8th, is another semi-decent call – again, clean and glassy, but only 3ft of swell and the energy is still weak at 109. It’s surfable, but just barely.

There’s a tiny pulse of energy that bumps the reading to 372 on Saturday afternoon, August 8th, but the swell is still only 5ft, and the onshore wind chops it up too much to be worth the paddle. That’s just a case of the numbers looking better than the reality.

The middle of the next week fades out fast. By Tuesday and Wednesday, August 11th and 12th, we’re down to ankle-biters – 3ft and less – with the energy dropping into the 70s and 80s. There’s a morning glass-off on Wednesday the 12th, but it’s flat and weak, not worth the wetsuit.

The second week stays locked in the same holding pattern. We see a slight bump back up to 4ft on the morning of Saturday, August 15th, with light winds and a glassy surface, but the period is short and the energy is only moderate at 180. It’ll be clean, but don’t expect any power. The rest of that week is more of the same – small cross-onshore junk in the afternoons, and a few clean mornings that deliver nothing over knee-high.

To be honest, there’s no standout session in the whole 16 days. It’s a patch of small, short-period swell and shifting winds that’ll keep the true die-hards out but won’t offer much else. You’d be better off checking the tide charts than the forecast for any real change. It’s all pretty marginal, and given the weak energy values across the board, the setup just isn’t there for any proper waves.

Keep the board dusty and the expectations low. Forecasts can change, but this run looks like a quiet one.

Rusty.

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