Flukey south swells all week; good options around Thursday
Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Monday 16th January)
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Best Days: Tues: northern corners for the leftover S'ly swell. Thurs: mix of S'ly swells with lumpy but improving conditions as overnight onshores swing early offshore across most coasts. Fri: smaller S'ly swell with early light winds. Sun/Mon: light winds and a fun mix of small S'ly swells.
Recap: Peaky NE windswell provided good waves in Sydney early Saturday morning before a S'ly change pushed through mid-late morning. Sunday delivered average but building mid-range S’ly swells in the lee of the change. Today we’ve seen a new long period S’ly swell glance the coast however wave heights have come in below forecast expectations just about everywhere. Most south facing beaches in Sydney saw intermittent 3ft sets and Newcastle managed 4ft bombs but elsewhere across Southern NSW we’ve had reliable reports of 6-8ft sets at a handful of reefs early this morning. Although the low generating this swell was incredibly intense - displaying a broad area of storm force SW winds below Tasmania on Saturday - it seems the fetch was just slightly off-axis for our swell window, so the resulting size has been much smaller than anticipated at most beaches, favouring just a few locations where the 'magic numbers' lined up.
Standard set size at Bondi today
This week (Jan 17th - 20th)
As a surf forecaster, one of the hardest times to make a decision is mid-swell event, when the early stages of said event haven’t lived up to expectations. That's where I am right now.
Based on today’s broad under-performance, it’d be easy to dismiss the latter stages of this swell event - due through Tuesday - and correspondingly lower size expectations. However as the low responsible for this event displayed several individual swell generating fetches, there’s an equal chance that the secondary S’ly swell due tomorrow may end up doing OK.
Regardless, it’s fair to say that confidence isn’t high on our southerly swell potential on Tuesday.
In Friday’s notes I’d estimated a broad peak through Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning before easing throughout the day. Our model guidance has just 0.8m @ 11.6 seconds from the south tomorrow - more size but less period than today - but its source is the trailing fetch at the backside of the low, which was better positioned inside our window than the stronger core winds around the low (responsible for today’s brief flush at 16 seconds that arrived at the Botany Bay buoy around 6:20am).
So, I think the most likely scenario is for a repeat of today, if slightly smaller surf around 2-3ft at south facing beaches (bigger in the Hunter, but smaller elsewhere). Expect very long breaks between the sets - between them it'll be very small, even at south facing beaches.
Freshening N/NE winds will make a meal of the open beaches so you’ll have to tuck inside sheltered northern corners for the best waves (they’ll also pick up the moss size from this southerly swell). These winds will also generate a small local windswell though no great quality or size is expected.
Fading S’ly swells and small NE windswells will pad out Wednesday with early light offshores under a troughy pattern ahead of a gusty S’ly change in the afternoon. Current expectations are that it’ll arrive too late to benefit our coast however conditions will certainly become quite choppy late in the day.
Thursday will see two sources of new swell from the southern quadrant. A decent SW fetch extending NE from Tasmania on Wednesday should kick up plenty of southerly swell in the 4ft+ range at south facing beaches (a little bigger in the Hunter) but we’ll also see a smaller undercurrent of SE swell from a polar SE fetch that developed around the low responsible for today’s flukey swell event. The large travel distance will limit size to 2-3ft and there’ll be be a lingering lumpiness through the lineup from overnight onshore winds, though we should largely see early SW breezes across most coasts except the Hunter region.
On Friday, the southerly swell combo will slowly ease in size (early 3ft sets at south facing beaches, smaller later) and winds will revert back to the NE as a trough envelops the South Coast, possibly forming into a closed low in the afternoon and driving a strong late southerly change across the region. We may also see some small NE windswell about the open beaches (more on that in Wednesday’s update).
This weekend (Jan 21st - 22nd)
The low forming off the South Coast looks impressive on individual synoptic snapshots but current model guidance has this system tracking eastwards post-haste, which reduces its swell potential for Southern NSW.
At this stage we’re looking at windy, building surf into the 3-5ft range at south facing beaches on Saturday, but quality won’t be high and protected locations will be much smaller. The peak in size will probably be short lived, so expect smaller surf either side of it.
Light variable winds and sea breezes with steadily easing swells are then expected through Sunday.
However, the distant polar SE swell source mentioned above (for Thurs/Fri) will remain active all week, though positioned even closer to the ice shelf. This will actually generate a small but steady supply of S/SE swell through the weekend and a small upwards trend is expected into Sunday. No great size is expected from this source and there’ll be very long breaks between the sets, but reliable swell magnets may see occasional 2-3ft bombs. Therefore Sunday could end up delivering some fun, if very slow waves.
Next week (Mon 23rd onwards)
The polar SE swell source mentioned above is expected to ebb and flow within our swell window right throughout the forecast period. Each period of intensification will however develop a little further east which reduces the size potential and consistency.
As such we should see a small undercurrent of SE swell through most of next week. Monday may see occasional 2-3ft sets early but it’ll probably ease back to 1-2ft during the day and through Tuesday and Wednesday, before perking back up to 2-3ft through Thursday. It’s a really interesting, unusual swell source so let’s keep a close eye on it over the coming days.
Otherwise, there are no other notable systems standing out in the long range charts.
See you Wednesday!
Comments
Whew! What a mission that was. Will be interesting to see how tomorrow pans out though with the wind outlook it's hard to get too excited.
If the size holds and the period drops it will probably help the beach breaks; a little less power, a lot more peaks!
It looks like there is very little south swell in Newcastle, 2-3 ft off E windswell is pushing through swallowing it all up!
Got great waves today at a somewhere south of Newy location. The S- SE swell was coming through at 4-5ft on the sets but like you say will happen tomorrow, there were never more than one or two, with the occasional third foam ball option. It was inconsistent but certainly enough for everyone. What was most enjoyable about today was the swell period.....love those long period swells and the energy that comes with them.
Summer has been a joke thank goodness I took advantage of lanina and went to whistler snowboarding for whole of Jan to get away from small waves and hot conditions
That system really did disappoint - in NZ, too.
I've been checking surface charts and model guidance the last five days, hoping that something would form in the Ross Sea. The ice has broken up down there, and long period S swells out of there bring some of the best swells to Wellington.
With the best sandbar in ages at my local beach it would only take a tiny swell to fire, but we got less than a foot.
Ah well, still managed 21 days of surf since Christmas, which is unheard of for us.
Fun 3ft sets across the Newy stretch this morning.
Couple of post-event notes following the flukey Mon/Tues S'ly groundswell across the East Coast.
The Gold Coast buoy recorded leading edge peak swell periods of 20 seconds late Monday afternoon. The bulk of the size filled into Northern NSW overnight Monday and into Tuesday morning, however away from a handful of south swell magnets, the Gold Coast was almost flat, owing to the swell direction. Elesewhere size ranged from 3-4ft on the Tweed Coast to a brief period of 6ft bombs across exposed south facing beaches south of Byron Bay.
This southerly swell then went on to deliver some incredible waves at Norfolk Island yesterday, as per today's WOTD. I'd be very interested to hear how Fiji, Samoa and Tonga (et al) did from this swell as it was aimed nicely within their swell windows.
Small weak leftovers today, max 2ft sets with long flat periods between. How's old mate below going right on a straighthander when there's a half way decent left going unridden!
Actually, it's touch and go. High res ACCESS C model has a decent S'ly fetch south from about Wollongong latitudes by around lunchtime so it's plausible for a building short range swell across south facing beaches mid-afternoon onwards. Maybe some bumpy 2-3ft sets at south facing beaches by the end of the day? Not worth much attention though.
The Far South and South Coasts should definitely see an increase though, there's a developing band of southerly gales off Eden this morning upwards of 30kts so (despite the terrible conditions) we should see a fairly robust increase throughout the day south of (say) Wollongong, up int the 4ft+ range at south facing beaches here.
In the 'surf' when it hit, good to be out there when changes like that hit. No warning, just came up 15kts out of nowhere.
Love the updates Ben... How's that slab at Norfolk island. Maybe an arvo surf is on the cards to escape this heat!
Thanks Alex, yeah as a wise old person once told me: an afternoon in any kind of surf is better than an afternoon in the office.
Thought I'd just create an account to say thanks for these reports Ben. Been living over here for the past 4 months, and your reports are spot on!
Thanks mate, glad you like the reports.