Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Monday 5th December)

Sign up to Swellnet’s newsletter and receive the Sydney/Hunter/Illawarra Forecaster Notes and latest news sent directly to your inbox. Upon signup you'll also enter the draw to win a surf trip to P-Pass for you and a mate. It doesn’t get much easier so click HERE to sign up now.

Best Days: Fri: building S'ly swell, though wind affected at south facing beaches. Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues: series of strong south swellswith mainly good winds in the mornings. 

Recap: Small weak swells have occurred the Southern NSW coast for the last few days. 

This week (Dec 6th - 9th)

Ain’t much in store for the short term.

Weak troughy systems in the Tasman Sea will contribute very little new swell throughout the week. A small northerly fetch off the Mid North Coast won’t be very well aligned for Southern NSW either.

An intense low tracking south of Tasmania looks good on the charts however it’s tracking to the south-east, perpendicular to our Great Circle path and is therefore unlikely to generate any meaningful surf to the region. A small flush of S’ly swell will push up the South Coast on Tuesday afternoon, and into remaining Sydney/Hunter coasts by Wednesday morning.

But, I'm not expecting much, if any size: indeed, the models aren't picking up any energy at all but we can’t discount the possibility for a few stray 1-2ft waves at reliable swell magnets (and the odd bigger set across exposed Hunter beaches). 

A tiny mid-week south swell is also possible from a minor fetch existing eastern Bass Strait but again, I’d be surprised if the swell magnets picked up much more than a weak 1-2ft low quality swell. 

A more robust NE fetch will develop across Southern NSW on Thursday as a vigorous front approaches from the south-west. This should build short range NE windswell into the 2-3ft range at NE swell magnets very late in the day (starting off from a tiny base through until lunchtime at least). Conditions won’t be great at these beaches though, under the freshening local airstream. 

Unfortunately the timing of the change looks as if it’ll occur Thursday evening, which is a shame as it’ll mean the NE swell will probably reach a peak overnight and be rapidly declining by early Friday morning (if the change were delayed by some 6-12 hours, we’d be looking at some tasty Friday morning peaks). 

Nevertheless, gusty S/SW winds in the lee of the change will generate a building S’ly swell that should manage 3-4ft sets at south facing beaches during the day. And there should be some peaky NE leftovers in the 2ft range as well at first light.

Fresh S/SW winds may be SW for a period early morning in some regions but they’ll straighten up from the south during the day. A bigger pulse of south swell is due overnight Friday and into Saturday, and there’s a chance this could be brought forward but I’ll have more details on that in Wednesday’s update.

This weekend (Dec 10th - 11th)

Looks like we’ve got plenty of south swell for the weekend.

The parent low to Friday’s short range south swell will track east of Tasmanian longitudes, setting up a decent sized groundswell that’s expected to peak on Saturday around 4-5ft at south facing beaches, before easing slowly into Sunday. Expect bigger waves across the Hunter but much smaller surf at beaches not completely open to the south.

Local winds look good  at this stage as a high ridges in from the west; the most likely scenario is early light variable tending offshore winds and afternoon sea breezes - Saturday’s from the SE and Sunday’s from the NE. 

Either way after a lacklustre period of waves it’ll be nice to get stuck into something with a little more grunt. And with two days to choose form it should help to spread the crowds around.

Next week (Dec 12th onwards)

A strong follow up front and low through the Lower Tasman Sea on Sunday will set up a stronger S’ly groundswell for Southern NSW, probably building through Monday and possibly coming in a  little higher than the weekend pulse. 

This system looks much stronger but it’s alignment isn’t quite as good as the weekend’s fetches so hopefully it’ll maintain course as is (though it is at the end of the model runs so we can expect a few changes between now and then). 

At this stage south facing beaches could see strong 4-6ft sets by the late afternoon, with bigger waves across the Hunter. Surf size will then throttle back through Tuesday. 

Other than this there are no other significant systems on the charts. A tropical development north of New Zealand is still expected to take shape though the models are now aligning it towards the East Coast of NZ’s North Island, with very little energy expected to reach mainland Australia.

See you Wednesday!