Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 19th May)

Best Days: Most days (except Saturday morning) should have fun waves with good conditions. Mon/Tues the highlight with a strong, long period S/SE thru' SE groundswell. 

Recap: Thursday saw some great waves with a new pulse of S/SE swell and favourably light offshore winds through the morning ahead of afternoon onshore breezes. Today surf size has slowly eased from the south and moderate onshore winds have kept surf quality well below par. A new short range NE swell expected to build overnight through Saturday has started to increase earlier than expected, and is now showing across Sydney beaches this afternoon, though quality isn’t very high. The leading edge of a new S’ly groundswell reached the South Coast this morning but doesn’t seem have arrived across the Sydney basin yet.

This week (May 18 - 19)

The models are still holding strong for some decent size out of the south on Saturday, but comparatively speaking, not a whole lot for Sunday (‘bout half the size). 

Conversely, we will see plenty of peaky, short range E/NE thru’ NE swell all weekend courtesy of the troughy infeed across the coast. 

I’m a little perplexed at the size seen this afternoon (2-3ft) as the fetch strength and length really wasn’t enough over the last 24 hours - and still doesn’t appear to be enough, according to hindcast data - to generate anything noteworthy. But, the surfcam doesn’t lie. 

So with the fetch expected to remain as is for the next few days we should see this size range continue through the weekend, possibly a few bigger sets at reliable NE swell magnets (i.e. occ 3-4ft) on Saturday. 

The fetch will slightly retreat eastwards and swing anticlockwise (i.e. more N’ly) late Saturday which will ease size back to 2-3ft for Sunday morning and 2ft for Sunday afternoon. 

For what its worth, this NE infeed is expected to be much stronger south of Wollongong so the South Coast and Far South Coasts will see larger waves from this source. 

As for local conditions, Saturday still looks dicey early with fresh N/NE winds a possibility at times but as the trough moves off the coast winds will ease and tend variable. This should create an afternoon window of OK lumpy conditions. Sunday will be better all round with mainly light variable winds tending S’ly in the south.  

But back to the long period S’ly swells - whilst the sources of each swell are strong, I think that the model is overcalling Saturday’s energy and set waves will probably max out around 3ft at south facing beaches. They'll be inconsistent too.

On the other hand, Sunday’s secondary pulse is only modelled to be 2ft and given the significant swell periods (15+ seconds) we are likely to see bigger surf than this at reliable south facing beaches, probably in the 3ft+ range. There will however be very long breaks between sets, and given the slightly flukey source of the swell (poorly aligned front in the SE Tasman Sea) the bigger waves may only glance the coast at the most reliable south swell magnets. 

So in short, keep your expectations low for the weekend’s southerly swells as they certainly have been generated from the outer edges of our preferred synoptic setups.

Next week (Mon 20th onwards)

Yep, we’ve still got a cracking S/SE thru’ SE groundswell on the way for Monday.

Surface conditions are looking nice with light variable winds both days, and surf size should reach a solid 4-5ft at most south facing beaches - of which a bunch of reliable south swell magnets and offshore bombies should manage 6ft+ sets at times late Monday, owing to the long swell periods. 

This swell is being sourced from the third polar low in the current sequence as it tracks directly below New Zealand (Craig mentioned the broad, far-reaching effects of this swell in yesterday’s article). Surf size will start off a little small across the Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra coasts early Monday, but the South Coast will pick up the leading edge earlier and thus should be showing nicely through the morning.

By the end of the day we should be at peak size, with wave heights expected to plateau into the evening before easing slowly through Tuesday. So, both days look unreal at this stage.

The good news is that beyond this we’re looking at an extended run of E/NE swell. And even better - the models have pushed the fetch a little more to the east since Wednesday’s runs (now N and NNW of New Zealand), and broadened it more aligned within our swell window. 

With this fetch expected to remain slow moving, we should see well over a week of intermittent but fun E/NE swell hovering somewhere between 2ft and maybe 3ft for much of the period, possibly with one or two slightly bigger embedded pulses (at this stage, Fri/Sat next week and then the following Monday). This swell is expected to hold through until the middle to latter part of the following week (31/5 or 1/6). More on this in Monday’s notes though.

Otherwise, most of our other swell sources look a little quiet next week.

Have a great weekend, see you on Monday!