Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 27th March)

Best Days: Sat/Sun: fun south swell with morning offshores. 

Recap: Surf conditions have been pretty much as expected for the last few days, being a small mix of E’ly swell and SE swells on Thursday around 2ft, with the E’ly swell becoming more dominant this morning ahead of a new S’ly swell starting to show at south facing beaches this afternoon (see pic below). Winds have been generally light with clean conditions, however a sea breeze has developed this afternoon.

This weekend (Mar 28 - 29)

More changes in the model data! Wednesday saw a slight upgrade from Monday’s slight downgrade, but we’ve had another about-face with the models weakening the secondary fetch around the low as it developed off the East Coast of Tasmania today. 

This essentially means a small drop in size for both Saturday and Sunday. I still think we’ll see 3ft+ sets at south facing beaches on Saturday but wave heights will be much smaller elsewhere due to the direction (the current E’ly swell will be all but gone by this time). 

Conditions should be clean early with light W/SW winds but moderate southerlies are expected just before lunch ahead of a south-east trend into the afternoon. So aim for a dawn patrol for the best waves. The Hunter should see set waves a foot or so bigger than Sydney too.

On Sunday, we’re looking at smaller intermittent S’ly tending S/SE swell thanks to a brief intensification across the south-west flank of the low early Saturday, as it tracks eastwards across the Tasman Sea. This should maintain 2-3ft waves at Sydney’s south facing beaches (again, smaller at remaining beaches) but with a few bigger 3-4ft bombs in the Hunter. Good conditions are expected for much of the day with early light offshore winds tending variable ahead of a moderate NE sea breeze.

However, on the balance I’m not expecting a lot of punch in the swell for the entire weekend, so make sure you dial into a swell magnet for the biggest and best waves. It will likely be quite lacklustre at protected spots.

Next week (Mar 30 onwards)

We’ve got a few sources to keep an eye on for the long term horizon. The first half off next week will remain rather dull though, with light winds Monday ahead of a freshening N/NE trend through Tuesday and Wednesday. Small NE windswells are possible mid-week but nothing of any great importance. 

Surf-wise, we'll see a small undercurrent of minor long period south swell at exposed swell magnets, thanks to a steady procession of very strong fronts through the Southern Ocean (Wednesday the pick at this stage in Sydney, perhaps late Tuesday on the Far South Coast, showing infrequent 2ft sets at south swell magnets) but it’s not worth working around.

Otherwise, the second half of next week looks to be characterised by a strengthening trade flow through the tropics - leading to a building swell into next weekend that should favour southern NSW with some small E/NE swell. 

Additionally, the models are suggesting a sharp upper trough will form a surface low in the central/southern Tasman Sea around  Thursday or Friday of next week. Whilst the specifics on this event are not yet clear, all indications are suggesting a solid SE groundswell sometime around Friday or Saturday. I’ll have more on this next week.