A Bass Strait fetch later Mon should provide some small refracted S swell later Tues, likely missing the South Coast-Illawarra stretch and showing from Sydney to the Hunter with some 2-3ft sets in the a’noon.
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A long trough through the Coral Sea and South Pacific with embedded low pressure centres is not tightening the pressure gradient to the extent modelled. As a result surf is coming in at the low end of f/cast expectations, and this soft trend is expected to continue.
We’re looking at a fairly static, summer-style blocking pattern this week with semi-stationary high pressure in the Tasman, and a ridge up along the Eastern seaboard with SE winds in the North, E/NE to NE winds from the Mid North Coast down to Southern NSW. A long trough line extending from the Solomon Islands to the North Island spins off some small low pressure areas this week. Although not quite as spectacular as model runs suggested last week we’re still in for some fun E swell this week with a juicier pulse expected late this weekend.
Charts have looked great all week with a low pressure system drifting in from the Coral Sea inside the North Island but the bad news is the low is now expected to track down the outside of the North Island with a major downgrade in swell potential.
We’re in the middle of a winter-style pattern more common in August than November with a small low formed in along a front/trough line off the Gippsland Coast accelerating W’ly winds across most of the Eastern seaboard. A series of deeper fronts and lows are also transiting the lower Tasman as part of this cold outbreak. While they are not ideally positioned for maximal S swell production up the East Coast we are still looking at some useful S swell pulses over the rest of the week and into the weekend.
While we won’t get the full payload of S’ly swell from this system as the system gets shunted SW as it enters the swell window (NE would be ideal!) we’re still on track for a few usable S swell pulses this week, with a trailing frontal system providing bigger S swell into and over the weekend.
Our Autumnal run of surf and condition is now going to be replaced by a more late winter-style pattern, dominated by W’ly winds. A complex low pressure gyre is located over Tasmania with a trough having moved offshore from the NSW coast and a cold front pushing through Bass Strait today.
Our Coral Sea low is now sitting just NE of Tasmania where it has merged with an exiting interior low to form a large, slow moving low-pressure gyre. Troughs are still snaking across Australia with a long trough line extending from the low pressure gyre through inland NSW up towards QLD and then into the Northern Territory, expected to move offshore through today. More inland troughs approach the coast during the rest of this week, driving an unstable but basically W’ly biased wind flow across the f/cast region through the end of the week and across the weekend.
A sub-tropical low which threatened SEQLD and NENSW over the weekend after it formed off the Capricorn coast is now steaming southwards at a fair clip, sliding along a high pressure ridge from a large (1035 hPa) high under Tasmania. The low is expected to merge with an inland low and horseshoe trough on the Gippsland Coast tomorrow forming a stalled low pressure gyre near Tasmania.
A trough of low pressure off the QLD Coast forms a small surface low over the weekend and this moves south Mon, interacting with a strong high moving south of Tasmania and another interior low forming in a trough line late in the weekend. This potent brew intensifies the NE-E/NE fetch forming in the Coral Sea and drags it south, where it more directly impacts temperate NSW.