Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 10th November)

Best Days: Sat: renewal of strong S'ly groundswell with mainly light winds. Sun: smaller S'ly swell with light winds. Thurs/Fri/Sat: small increase in E/NE swell. Next Sun thru' following Wed: sustained large E/NE tending E'ly then E/SE swells. 

Recap: Strong though easing southerly swells have padded out the last few days, and winds have been generally light and variable with afternoon sea breezes. South facing beaches managed 3-5ft sets on Thursday (bigger in the Hunter), easing to 3ft this morning.

Clean small peelers at Shark Island today

This weekend (Nov 11th - 12th)

We’ve got a great weekend of surf, winds and weather ahead, at least for the first half anyway. 

A slow moving high pressure system south of us will maintain a weak pressure gradient and thus very light winds both days. Afternoon sea breezes are possible though no major strength is expected. 

A new S’ly groundswell is expected to push along the Far South Coast this afternoon, and will reach Sydney overnight, providing strong energy through Saturday morning.

I’m still a little cautious on size: our in-house model is calling 5ft sets at south facing beaches (note: this is slightly bigger than 4-5ft, which is in turn slightly bigger than 3-5ft), but despite the responsible system south of Tasmania on Thursday showing very strong winds and a broad, focused fetch, its alignment was still well away from our swell window.  

Probably assisting surf potential is a slightly more southerly latitude of the storm track, which allows it to spread up the NSW coast much more efficiently than a frontal passage immediately south of Tasmania. 

Still, I’m going to stick with Wednesday’s estimates of 3-5ft surf at south facing beaches, with bigger bombs across the Hunter (4-6ft), and - as per usual - much smaller surf away from beaches with southerly exposure. Also, set waves will likely be quite inconsistent due to the distant source and poor alignment of the fetch.

This swell will ease into the afternoon, but abate more prominently throughout Sunday with early 2-3ft sets at south facing beaches likely down to 1-2ft by the afternoon. However, conditions will again be favourable under a light wind regime.

Next week (Nov 13th onwards)

Small, residual swells are expected from Monday to Wednesday next week. We have no new swell sources expected in our window over the weekend so we’ll be back to the swell magnets. Winds will be generally light and variable to begin with but a slow freshening trend from the NE is expected throughout the period as a surface trough moves in slowly from the west. 

Long term swell prospects look excellent.

A stationary blocking high in the Tasman early next week will develop a modest trade flow across its northern flank, and, as has been discussed since last Friday, we are likely to see a small tropical disturbance near New Caledonia mid-week drop to the south as an easterly dip, forming an impressive subtropical low during Thursday and Friday. 

This system will be a major source of swell for us over the weekend and into the first half of the following week. Initially, we’ll see a small increase in trade swell later next week, but on Sunday the groundswell is expected to kick in properly, delivering 5-6ft sets out of the E/NE across all coasts, trending E'ly then E/SE as the low moves into the Tasman Sea. 

Even better - the slow moving nature of this system means we’ll see strong swell persist in this size range through until about the following Wednesday. So, that’s likely to be four consecutive days of strong swell from Southern NSW's favourite swell direction (well for most coasts anyway). I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a few embedded pulses within this period that punch higher than these figures too, but we’ve got a whole week of analysing the charts ahead, in order to pinpoint the specifics.

In fact, if you want to believe the long range fantasty charts, they're suggesting we'll see easterly swells persist thrugh until the following weekend as the low hangs off the west coast of New Zealand. 

See you Monday!