Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Wednesday 1st July)

Best Days: Thurs: good waves early at south facing beaches. Fri PM:  strong S'ly swell, improving as winds back off and tend offshore (may not be very good in the Hunter tho'). Sat/Sun/Mon: strong S'ly swells with good winds. Later next week: chance for a new SE groundswell.

Recap: Tuesday delivered good waves with easing S’ly swell and mainly light winds. Today has mainly seen smaller leftover S’ly energy but a new S’ly groundswell has started filling into the coast this afternoon, a little later than expected - but south facing beaches like Bondi are now seeing 3-4ft sets (see Bondi surfcam grabs below, from just after 5pm), and bigger surf is expected overnight as this pulse continues to fill in. Winds have been generally light today so apart from a few lumps and bumps from a southerly trend, it’s been generally clean on top.

This week (July 2 - 3)

The current swell event filling in across the Sydney coast will likely peak under the cover of darkness (d’oh!) and then trend downwards through Thursday. However, surface conditions are looking very good for the early session with freshening W’ly winds, ahead of an afternoon SW change associated with a cold front that’ll probably trend S/SW mid-late afternoon. 

Because of the way in which this front will cross the coast (across, rather than along) it’s unlikely that we’ll see any major kick in local southerly swell before close of business, but it certainly can’t be ruled out.

Nevertheless, those locations picking up any size (if it eventuates, which I don't think will happen) would be blown out anyway. So aim for an early paddle on Thursday for the best waves, and head for a south facing beach - we should see occasional 3ft sets in Sydney at dawn, with smaller surf elsewhere, but bigger near 4ft+ in the Hunter, and trending downwards steadily from the get-go.

On Friday, we’re looking at generally average conditions across many regions thanks to a fresh, lingering S/SW flow that’ll create bumpy conditions at open beaches. This will mainly affect the Hunter region however south from the Northern Beaches we’re likely to see pockets of early W/SW tending SW winds that should clean up conditions quite a bit (and south of Wollongong, winds should be light offshore all day). But there'll probably be some cross-wobble on the surface from the overnight southerly airstream, so certainly don't expect any degree of perfection.

Fortunately, the overall synoptic pattern is for a weakening flow throughout the day, so conditions should slowly improve as the day wears on. As for size, Sydney’s south facing beaches should see 4-6ft surf, with larger 6ft+ waves across the Hunter. Again, beaches with less southerly exposure will be smaller, and they’ll generally be the pick with this airstream.

This weekend (July 4 - 5)

We’ve still got a great weekend of waves ahead. Local winds should remain light and variable (mainly offshore) under a broad but weak high pressure system, leading to clean conditions both days. 

As for surf, the front responsible for Friday’s large southerly swell will actually extend all the way south to the ice shelf on Thursday, in fact a developing polar low should assist in injecting the existing southerly swell with some long period energy at times.

So, both days should see strong but lully swell from the south, probably in the 3-5ft ranger at most south facing beaches however with the larger wavelengths some regions (such as the Hunter) and also offshore bombies are likely to rake in bigger bombs around 6ft at times.  

The difference with this weekend’s waves is that rather than being a well defined swell front with a predictable trend (i.e. up quickly, levelling out for a period, then tapering off slowly), we’ll see broad periods of inactivity, then spurts of energy as various swell fronts reach landfall. So, that’s the reason for the larger error margin this weekend - there’ll probably be four or five different pulses reach the coast at some point - including overnight - and estimating the precise arrival time, duration and intensity of each (including the overlap of each swell train) is quite difficult. 

Nevertheless, in summary - it’s looking very good, and absolutely well worth your attention.

As a side note, and as mentioned on Monday, the Far South and possibly South Coasts may see the late arrival of a slightly bigger pulse of S’ly swell mid-late afternoon, being generated by an intense low modelled to cross the waters south of Tasmania on Saturday morning. However Sydney et al probably won’t see this new swell until Monday.

Next week (July 6 onwards)

The late Sunday swell for the South Coast (mentioned above) is on target to produce a very good day of waves on Monday, however as per usual under these kinds of acute southerly swells there’ll be a large range in wave heights across the coast. 

The low is lining up pretty well within the window, so south facing beaches in Sydney should see solid 4-5ft surf, however the Hunter always does really well with these events so exposed spots could be anywhere upwards of 6ft to maybe even 8ft (if we’re very lucky). But it’ll obviously be much smaller at locations not open to the south. Conditions look great at this stage with a light to moderate W/NW flow.

This looks to be followed by a day or so of mediocre conditions (Tues, maybe even Wed) as low forms east of Bass Strait, strengthening a SW tending S’ly flow across the region. We’ll see some short range south swell from it but probably nothing of major quality, mainly due to the unfavourable local winds. 

Beyond this, the Tasman low is expected to track eastwards to a position off the West Coast of New Zealand before reforming and restrengthening, and this has all kinds of promise for a solid SE swell later next week (Thurs/Fri, maybe Sat). It’s still early days but we could be looking at anywhere between 4ft and maybe 6ft of strong SE swell with good winds locally. Let’s take a closer look in Friday’s update.