2022: The Year In Pictures

It's all becoming a blur.

After three back to back La Niña's, trying to think back through individual swell events amid a continuous run of surf and favourable conditions is tricky.

At times it was a matter of being in the right place at the right time, but for the most part you couldn't really go wrong from Queensland to Eden.

The start of year was plagued by brown flood water and persistent torrential rainfalls, flooding out nearly every coastal lagoon, scouring the estuaries deep and wide while also causing severe coastal erosion.

Brown lineups were the norm through the start of the year

The water quality became so bad that the NSW Surf Life Saving Championships, due to be held at Manly in late February was called off - much to the joy of non-clubbie locals. The reason being, this was just as the surf and banks started to turn on, and waves that would have otherwise been off limits had the barriers removed.

The hottest ocean temperature on record was also registered off Long Reef (Sydney) in February, coming in at 26.6 °C, beating the previous records by 0.3°C measured in 2004 and 2019. This provided an additional moisture source to the atmosphere which enhanced coastal rainfall, more than doubling the long-term average falls during February and tripling them through March.

Saturated landscapes

Surf wise, the highlight of the year would have to be a swell that developed at the start of April. A swell that was so fanciful on the charts a week out, it was quickly dismissed as the classic over-hype by the American global forecasting model GFS.

That was until the European solution came into alignment, showing the formation of a severe low off the southern NSW coast that instead of moving out to sea, bringing southerly winds at the peak of the swell, was forecast to retrograde back to the west, swinging winds offshore just as the swell peaked.

After struggling to sleep as the buoy continued to rise Friday night, I awoke to observe fresh winds out of the west with the wave buoy off Port Botany registering 6m of pure groundswell at 15s period. Serious numbers and some of the biggest I remember under an offshore wind since 2016.

This maxed out all but a select few locations, one of them being a Sydney rock-shelf which transformed the swell into 10-12ft+ heaving slabs.

I had no intention of surfing such crazy waves, but I had to be in the water, capturing the chaos from the best seat in the house. The result can be seen in the below images.

Joey Keogh negotiating the fang

Michael (Kel) Lavers setting up a beautiful green barrel (above and below)

Max McGuigan driving hard around and into the barrel (above and below)

At the same time, the extra-large groundswell was also causing widespread erosion, enhanced by significant infragravity waves making their way hundreds of metres inland thanks to the open, deepened lagoon entrances created by all the flooding.

One such infragravity wave was captured clearly making its way up Queenscliff Lagoon on video, the best such example of these waves that'd I've seen to date.

Through the middle of the year we saw one significant southerly groundswell falling in line with the June Long Weekend, then followed up by a great easterly groundswell.

Large southerly sets holding on a rare patch of sand

Christmas in July across the East Coast

While these swells were noteworthy, there was one more memorable day out at the local reef early July. The reason being there was one glaring omission from the April swell, that being Sam Jones who was on holiday overseas.

He wasn't going to miss the next time it broke, and while being in the 8-10ft range, hence smaller than the previous swell, it was every bit as heavy, with Jonesy stealing the show below the cheers from the cliffs.

Sam Jones making up for missing the April swell of swells (above and below)

Things tend to slow down into spring on the East Coast, but this was flipped on its head thanks to the third La Niña restrengthening through the winter months, reaching a peak into early spring but then lingering through to early summer.

This meant unseasonal quality swells from the east continued along with favourable winds, providing some pumping sessions into October, with fun surf continuing over the following months.

The upper reaches of the Snowy Mountains benefited from all the moisture arriving from a negative Indian Ocean Dipole event, with it just being cold enough to snow more than rain. This provided an extended spring touring season, well into the end of the year.

Beautiful spring corn conditions

Early December fired up out of the east-northeast again and as I write, we've got another extended run of easterly swell on the way with a peak due into the start of the New Year.

Michael (Kel) Lavers free falling

Sam Nolan treading a fine line from deep

A final thanks has to go to those who attended this year's Swellnet Board Yard Sale at Freshwater, with over $3,000 raised for Lifeline.

Have a great New Year and I'll see you in 2023.

// CRAIG BROKENSHA