The evolution of the current pattern has sped up compared to Monday’s notes with high pressure drifting towards the South Island and weakening and a low centred around the North Island moving NE. A fetch off the top of the North Island is just scraping the edge of our swell window (better aimed at the sub-tropics).

A front pushing aggressively NE into the lower Tasman on the weekend forms a low pressure centre which becomes slow moving near New Zealand early next week and this will be a co-main swell source for the week. The other source will be short range, peaky E’ly swell from a tradewind style fetch in the Southern Coral Sea.

Very wintry looking synoptic chart as we exit Autumn with a large high moving in over the continent with active cold fronts tied to low pressure systems tracking into the Tasman Sea. That pattern will extend through most of the week before a high cell drops into the Tasman Friday, with stronger frontal activity expected over the weekend and into next week

As we come to the end of another (very!) active Autumn we’ve got a typical looking winter synoptic pattern unfolding with a dominant high drifting over NSW bringing settled conditions with a very active Southern Ocean storm track spawning a strong cold front which will impact the state on Fri. The front and an upper low are expected to form a surface low Fri off the Central NSW Coast. Compared to Mon’s notes this low is now expected to be weaker and much faster moving bringing a smaller, faster up and down in S swell.