Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 23rd December)

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Best Days: Plenty of surf every day though NE winds will create a few problems (and also bring in the blueys and drop the water temps). Solid E/NE groundswell due Thurs/Fri.

Recap: A fresh S’ly swell provided good 3ft waves across most south facing beaches on Thursday, before easing into today. A small E/NE swell is providing just-rideable options at remaining open beaches. Winds have been mainly light onshore for the last 48 hours though they’re gathering strength this afternoon from the NE.

This weekend (Dec 24th - 25th)

A blocking high pressure system is setting up camp in the Tasman Sea and will remain the dominant weather system for Southern NSW for almost the next week. 

This will result in moderate to fresh NE winds almost every day, which will create tricky surface conditions at open beaches. These winds will generate a small NE windswell over the weekend though quality won’t be high.

The dominant swell in the water this weekend will be a distant E/NE trade swell generated by a tropical depression that’s occupied the waters around Fiji from last weekend through the bulk of this week. The distant source of this swell means that set waves will be inconsistent (however, the short range NE swell should fill in the gaps nicely). 

Surf size is expected to increase slowly through Saturday towards a broad plateau on Sunday. In general we’re looking at peaky 2ft surf from the local NE source but every ten or fifteen minutes the distant E/NE swell should provide bigger waves in the 2-3ft range. The upper end of this size range is more likely on Sunday than Saturday.

Next week (Dec 26th onwards)

A near stationary NE fetch in our immediate swell window throughout next week will fluctuate wave heights from this direction throughout the long term forecast period. A minor strengthening of the fetch on Monday could generate a brief peak (that afternoon and into Tuesday morning) with 2-3ft sets, but it’ll ease back a touch into Wednesday before a possible rebuilding trend into Thursday.

The long range E/NE swell will ease slowly from Monday. It’ll probably be a little hard to distinguish both swell sources during this time frame but the combination of the two should provide some peaky options. Just mind the bluebottle and the cold water upwelling that is very common during these kinds of local NE synoptic patterns. 

Rebuilding trades through the northern Tasman Sea over the weekend and early next week will then start to generate some small sideband E/NE swell through the middle of next week.

In Wednesday’s notes I mentioned a possible tropical depression near New Caledonia early next week that had the potential to generate a stronger E/NE groundswell for the second half of next week. Fortunately, the models have come inline with this thinking and they’re expecting a substantial easterly dip to form between SE Qld and New Caledonia around Tuesday. This may evolve into a closed low, though more likely a hybrid system than a tropical cyclone (for our purposes, there's not much difference - in fact hybrid lows are often better swell producers than tropical cyclones as they display broader surface wind fields).

This system is expected to focus its swell towards Northern NSW and SE Qld but we should see a decent spread of E/NE swell across Southern NSW, probably building through Thursday and Friday and holding around 4-5ft. There's every chance for an upgrade too, but at around a week out it's better to be a little cautious at such long leads times. 

And the other good news is that there’s no major signs of a break in the broad scale blocking pattern which increases the potential for secondary/reinforcing swell sources to develop in our Tasman swell windows shortly after the easterly dip event.

So, it’s looking like a very prosperous Xmas holiday period.

Have a safe Xmas, see you on Monday!