Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 2nd December)

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Best Days: No great days.

Recap: A small mix of NE and S swells provided clean beach breaks across open Sydney beaches on Thursday, before freshening sea breezes bumped up conditions into the afternoon. A second burst of small NE swell expected to build today is likely to fall short of expectations, with the responsible fetch (late Thursday) being a little weaker than modelled on Wednesday. Exposed NE facing beaches are picking up a few weak 2ft sets but elsewhere it’s tiny, and I can’t see it getting any bigger than what we’re seeing now. Winds are mainly light and variable so it’s super clean on top.

Small clean peelers at Manly around lunchtime

This weekend (Dec 3rd - Dec 4th)

We’re still looking down the barrel (boom, tish) of a poor weekend of waves. 

A lingering moderate N’ly fetch off the Mid North Coast will maintain small levels of NE windswell for open beaches south of about the Sydney region on Saturday, but no great size is expected (around 1.5ft tops). 

A gusty S’ly change overnight tonight will persist about most coasts into Saturday, with winds likely swinging to the south-east at some point. No major strength is expected - for example, it won't be strong enough to generate a meaningful short range swell event - however it’ll chop up open beaches considerably. A small windswell will build at south facing beaches throughout the day, but only of poor quality.

Sunday is looking at smaller, weaker residual energy from the south, and a small undercurrent of weak NE windswell. Conditions will be better with light variable winds and sea breezes but for the most part there’s unlikely to be any great size. 

Given the poor outlook for Sunday (and the prospects of light morning winds), there’s all the more reason to cast an occasional watch over the surfcams for signs of a small, distant SE swell generated by a low well south-east of New Zealand earlier in the week. It’s an extremely low confidence event but could very well produce a few occasional 2ft sets at exposed swell magnets throughout the day.

Certainly not worth any highway mileage though.

Next week (Dec 5th onwards)

Next week still looks dismal! 

There are no major swell generating systems expected to enter our swell windows. A frontal system progged in Wednesday’s models has had its storm track tweaked unfavourably over the last few days so the prospects of a mid-week south swell is now on the low side.

Here are the regions to keep a watch on: a closed low is expected to form within a surface trough off the coast around Tuesday, before the broader system tracks out into the central Tasman Sea. It doesn’t look like much of a swell producer right now - mainly due to the unfavourable easterly track - but if the models slow or stall this pattern, we could see some easterly swell potential mid-late week. 

Northerly winds across the Northern NSW coast all week probably won’t be aligned within our swell window at first but the second half of next week has a little more promise thanks to an approaching front from the south-west. So, short range NE swell is possible late in the week.

Otherwise, the other area of interest I’ll be keeping a close eye on is a small easterly dip south of Fiji around Monday, which is expected to remain slow moving through the week as it broadens an easterly fetch to the south. This has the potential to set up a useful E/NE swell later next week and into the weekend, but I’ll have more on that in Monday’s update.

Have a great weekend!