Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 24th March)

Best Days: Sat/Sun: light winds and a fun, slowly easing SE swell with mainly light winds. 

Recap: Easing swells padded out Thursday morning though a new S/SE swell built into the afternoon originating from a Tasman Low, with exposed south facing beaches seeing occasional 3ft+ sets. There were also some reports of new long period S’ly swell glancing the coast during the day, though no buoys anywhere on the East Coast (NSW or Qld) detected this energy yesterday so it was likely a very faint forerunner signal.  Winds were S/SW so conditions weren’t great, but they did back off into the afternoon. The swell from the Tasman Low has levelled out this morning in the 3-4ft range, and the secondary southerly groundswell also reached the Eden buoy overnight (see the jump in peak swell periods to 15 seconds, below). This should continue to glance the Sydney region throughout the day though the S/SE swell will remain dominant. Winds are light W’ly across the region, though some locations are seeing moderate S'ly winds develop mid-morning. 

This weekend (Mar 25th - 26th)

The models have ever so slightly delayed the backside phase of the Tasman Low for today, which means it’ll remain active for a little longer than anticipated in Wednesday’s notes, and will therefore provide good quality surf for more of the weekend. 

Because of the low’s latitude and the alignment of the fetch, we’ll see the most size aimed into the Sydney and Hunter regions, with wave heights tapering off slightly south from the Illawarra to the Far South Coast. South facing beaches from Sydney northwards should pick up 3-4ft sets for much of Saturday. Expect smaller surf elsewhere. 

The long period S’ly groundswell due today will also ease into the weekend so expect the S/SE swell to remain as the dominant energy.

Surf size will then continue to abate through Sunday, with 2-3ft+ sets at south facing beaches north of Sydney early morning, easing to 2ft throughout the day. Again, surf size will be smaller elsewhere.

A weak troughy pattern over the weekend will maintain generally light variable winds. Now, “variable” implies any direction - so it’s possible we may see some form of onshore at times (biggest risk is a moderate N/NE breeze on Saturday afternoon) but for the most part conditions should be very good, especially in the mornings.

Next week (Mar 27th onwards)

Still nothing amazing expected next week. The weekend’s swells will bottom out into Monday, and winds will freshen from the NE though no major surf is expected for this source. 

A shallow S’ly change will push across the coast on Tuesday, again without sufficient strength behind it to generate any new swell. We may see some small NE swell from Monday’s freshening breeze but the South Coast is more likely to see a workable size range, with Sydney expected to remain pretty small in the 1.5ft range tops. However, there is a chance we may see this upgraded over the weekend.

As mentioned on Wednesday, the Tasman Low's track over the weekend pushes it near New Zealand and the models are suggesting a very small but tight E'ly fetch will develop along its southern flank. However as feared, they’ve downgraded this in the latest runs so I’m not expecting much energy from this source through the middle of the week. I’ll take a closer look on Monday but for now it’s not shaping up to deliver much size. 

Otherwise, we are looking at small flukey swell sources for the long term. The Southern Ocean storm track will be aimed away from our swell window and the only possible systems of note are a small stalled trough in the lee of Tuesday’s southerly change (low to moderate local swell potential right now), and some indications of developing tropical activity south of Fiji during the middle of the week - though without any substance at the present time.

A tropical cyclone is also expected to impact Northern Qld early next week but this is nowhere near our swell window (or even SE Qld’s for that matter) so don’t expect to see any swell from this region either. 

Have a great weekend! See you Monday.