Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 9th May)

Best Days: Sat: generally offshore winds and a fun, easing S/SE swell. Get in early for the biggest waves.

Recap: A large S/SE swell built across the Sydney coast on Thursday but fresh S’ly winds kept wave quality to a minimum (except on the Northern Beaches where early W’ly winds allowed clean conditions at dawn). Wave heights came in at the bottom end of the forecast size range (mainly 6ft+ south facing beaches against a forecast of 6-8ft) and it didn’t have quite the amount of strength we were hoping for. As such, protected locations didn’t fare very well with only small surf on offer. Conditions have improved greatly today with light offshore winds and a strong but easing S/SE swell.

This weekend (May 10-11)

Plenty of fun waves are expected on Saturday. Today’s swell will continue to slowly abate in size but the morning should have good 2-3ft+ waves at beaches with some southerly exposure. Winds should also play ball - perhaps an early northerly breeze but it’ll swing NW throughout the day - ideal for the exposed beachies but aim for the morning for the most size. Might be a little smaller on the South Coast owing to the location of the responsible fetch but there should still be some fun beachies around the traps.

Sunday will see a continuation of the easing swell trend and early W’ly winds will swing gusty southerly in the afternoon as a change sweeps up the coast. I don’t think there’ll be much surf left on Sunday but even if there is you’ll have to aim for the morning session.

Next week (May 12-16 onwards)

Next week is a tricky call right now. Model guidance from Monday onwards generally has a similar broadscale synoptic pattern with a stalling trough setting up camp in the western Tasman, but the specifics are very important due to the close proximity to the coast. 

Our surf forecast graph is based around the GFS model and its most recent solution has the trough further north-east (i.e. in the central/northern Tasman) than previous model runs had. This is positioned further away from the Sydney region and the resulting fetch lies pretty much outside of our swell window.

However, future model runs may rein this back closer to the coast, which would be more inline with the other model output (EC and ACCESS). 

Either way, Monday will see a small, low quality south swell (in the wake of Sunday’s change) that’ll ease slowly during the day (winds will be mainly onshore too). Depending on how the trough develops, we’re likely to see a building short range E/SE swell through Tuesday and Wednesday but I’m now doubtful we’ll see much more than (in a best case scenario) about 3ft of average peaky energy. Even that may be rather optimistic, so we’ll really have to check back on Monday for an update of the situation.

Elsewhere, we’re also looking at the arrival of a small long period SE groundswell later Tuesday and into Wednesday, generated from a rare part of our swell window. A deep Southern Ocean low well to the S/SE of New Zealand today is expected to stall and form a small but intense band of storm force SE winds off the ice shelf, aimed briefly at the Australian East Coast. The small fetch length, short duration and large travel distance will probably restrict wave heights to just a couple of feet, but if you see some long period (~16 second) from the SE at the buoys during this time, you’ll know where it came from.

Otherwise there’s not much showing up on the long term charts. Let’s take a closer look on Monday.