Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Monday 28th November)

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Best Days: Difficult forecast due to tricky winds. Wed AM looks like the pick with a small combo of swells and early light winds. Fri AM may also see small waves and light winds early.

Recap: The weekend’s swell trend played out largely as expected, with steady heights in the 3-4ft range out of the south between Saturday and Sunday morning ahead of a slightly bigger pulse of south swell on Sunday afternoon around 4-5ft. This swell then eased throughout today with early 3-4ft sets now down a little in size. Saturday’s winds were early light then moderate to fresh NE; Sunday saw moderate to fresh SE winds all day, before we returned back to the early light/freshening NE pattern again today.  

Still some decent sets at Bondi this afternoon

This week (Nov 29th - Dec 2nd)

We’ve got a couple of tricky days ahead in the surf forecasting department.

Today’s south swell is expected to ease into Tuesday, but a small, low confidence S/SE swell that’s not showing on the models - but was mentioned in last week’s notes - may produce some infrequent sets at south facing beaches.

This swell was expected to be generated by the parent low to the frontal progression that generated the weekend’s southerly swell. It was positioned south of New Zealand, so we’re only looking at the outer edges of this swell glancing the coast, but it’s plausible for inconsistent 2-3ft sets to appear at south facing beaches at times. 

However, a southerly change currently developing off the Far South Coast is expected to reach the Sydney region in the early hours of the morning, and will create choppy conditions at exposed beaches - wiping out the potential for any clean waves at those beaches picking up any size. The change will be into the Newcastle region around dawn; there’s a slim chance for half an hour of lighter winds around first light but I wouldn’t get your hopes up.

These winds will generate a building short range S’ly swell during the day, but without any quality. NE facing beaches may also see a small peaky windswell in and around the 2ft mark (south from the Northern Beaches) however the timing of the southerly change isn’t favourable for any NE swell as it’ll push the fetch outside of our immediate swell window overnight (a later arrival would open up the possibility of the swell peaking early morning, but it’ll probably occur around midnight).

Small weak leftovers are then expected on Wednesday (1-2ft) with light variable winds as the trough (responsible for the change) moves offshore. The swell direction should swing around to the SE inline with the re-orientation of the weakening trough, but in any case no great size is expected. Fresh NE sea breezes are expected after lunch.

Also in the water on Wednesday - and this could be the ‘best' swell of the week - is a small S’ly groundswell, originating from a small cut-off low south of Tasmania today. The fetch length is only small and it’s not especially well lined up within our swell window, but south facing beaches may pick up a few 2ft+ sets, with bigger bombs likely across the Hunter. This swell may not quite be in the water at dawn; however it’ll build rapidly through the morning and a peak is likely early afternoon.

A similar pattern as per what we’re expecting to happen tonight, is then modelled to occur on Wednesday night. A southerly change will push up the coast, shunting a potentially favourable NE swell source out of our swell window at an inconvenient time. 

As such, Thursday morning is looking to see a small combination of building S’ly windswell and easing NE windswell around the 1-2ft mark at respective open beaches. There’ll also be some small residual lines of southerly groundswell from Wednesday’s pulse.

Lastly, to finish the week we have yet another small unusual swell source that’s not really showing up on the models right now. The front mentioned above (for Wednesday’s S’ly swell) is expected to merge with a broad, stationary polar low well south of New Zealand on Tuesday. This parent system is expected to display S/SW gales through the periphery of our S/SE swell window, which should send up some small inconsistent waves for Friday or thereabouts, somewhere in the 2ft range at south facing beaches. 

Again, this is a very low confidence event but right now there’s a chance for some reasonable waves at south facing beaches as we’ll be under a weak pressure pattern and consequently light variable winds and sea breezes. More on this on Wednesday.

This weekend (Dec 3rd - Dec 4th)

The weekend forecast looks dismal on the charts at the moment, with no major swells and variable tending onshore winds under a persistent troughy pattern.

However, there’s yet ANOTHER swell generating system on the charts that’s not being resolved by the wave models very well and it could also produce some small rideable waves (on a weekend when an ordinary glance would suggest no surfable activity). 

In the notes above for the small S/SE swell I mentioned for Friday, this stationary polar low is expected to also merge with a frontal infeed from the east. This kind of development isn’t such a rare occurrence, but the actual storm track and timeline is - we’re looking at the possibility of slow moving E’ly gales in an unusual part of our distant SE swell window, which could very well produce some occasional 2ft sets at exposed beaches four or five days later. 

Right now the arrival of this is hard to pin down but it seems there’s a great chance of it being a Sunday (rather than Saturday) swell event.

I’ll have more info on this in Wednesday’s update.

Next week (Dec 5th onwards)

Nothing major on the long range charts. We’ve still got some tropical developments to keep monitoring but they’re not showing any major signs of swell for Southern NSW.

Elsewhere, the Southern Ocean storm track looks zonal and the Tasman Sea looks weak and troughy.

So, we could be looking at an extended period of small flukey swells for some time.

See you Wednesday!