Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Wednesday 24th January)

Best Days: No great days this week/weekend due to a lack of size and mainly NE winds. Monday onwards looking much better with strong building E/NE swells through the middle of the week plus a strong south swell.

Recap: Small NE swells have dominated the open beaches for the last few days, with size generally around the 2ft+ mark. A small flush of south swell was detected at the buoys late Tuesday and overnight, though it seemed to have vanished by this morning (I surfed it up in Northern NSW this morning, where sets were occasionally 2ft+). Winds have been out of the NE so conditions haven’t been great.

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This week (Jan 25th - 26th)

No changes to the rest of the week. We’re looking at persistent NE winds through until Monday, though no great strength is likely and the airstream will ebb and flow in our near swell window, which slightly reduces the potential size. 

Wave heights should manage either side of 2ft+ at NE facing beaches both Thursday and Friday, with mainly slow peaky surf on offer. Small long period S’ly swells may appear sporadically over the coming days but they’ve been sourced from poorly aligned Southern Ocean fronts so they won’t generate much size. 

Expect generally average conditions - possible brief windows of slack winds and thus lumpy/glassy surface conditions, otherwise moderate out of the NE with plenty of wobble through the lineup. 

This weekend (Jan 27th - 28th)

Ahh, complex weather charts. Gotta love ‘em. 

Local NE winds will continue through the weekend so we’ll see a continuation of small underlying NE windswell in and around the 2ft+ range. Quality will be average to low though thanks to the accompanying winds. 

At the same time, we’ll see slowly building trade swell from two sources. The first is a deepening trough well NE of New Zealand, that was mentioned in last week’s notes but inadvertently missed on Monday. It looks good on the synoptics, but in all honestly it’s not that big not very strong and the enormous travel distance will shave off a considerable amount of size and consistency. 

This swell will slowly appear throughout the weekend (more likely Sun than Sat) but I don’t think it’ll provide much more size than the pre-existing NE windswell. 

In addition to this, a building ridge through the northern Tasman Sea from Saturday onwards will generate some trade swell that’ll build through Sunday. However, again I don’t think we’ll see much more than 2-3ft sets at NE facing beaches through Sunday. Expect smaller surf at south facing beaches all weekend, and probably up into the Northern Hunter region on Saturday before the long range swell starts to kick in on Sunday. 

All in all, it looks like an average peaky weekend of waves with a good chance for a decent local upwelling to boot.

Next week (Jan 29th onwards)

The forecast models are (again) moving around a LOT for next week. However, the broader pattern is extremely dynamic and we’ll certainly see stacks of surf, likely from several different sources. 

First up - a series of tropical lows pulling off the monsoon trough across the tropical South Pacific/Coral Sea region will interact with the Tasman ridge, and set up strong E’ly fetches in the Northern Tasman Sea early next week. I’m not confident on actual surf size/timings etc due to the considerable variability between model runs, however it’s looking more likely that we’ll see a decent E/NE swell arriving early next week, building into the 3-4ft range through Monday afternoon and Tuesday. 


A second, stronger round of swell from this source is then likely mid-week (Wed/Thurs), possibly in the 5-6ft+ range though we need a few more days to iron out the specifics (current synoptics - see below - would suggest close to 6-8ft+, especially across the South Coast, though I would be hesitant to go out on a limb right now).

Further small to moderate E/NE swell is likely later in the week and into next weekend, though this will be dependent on how the monsoon trough behaves. It's a long time away in forecast land.

Around the same time, a cold front is expected to enter the SW Tasman Sea and interact with the broader trough across the northern Tasman Sea, setting up a strong southerly fetch that’ll generate large S/SE swells from very late Tuesday through Wednesday and Thursday, possibly in the 5-6ft+ range at south facing beaches.  

The only downside is that the accompanying southerly winds - fresh to strong at times - will render many beaches quite bumpy so you’ll have to look towards southern corners. However they will see plenty of size thanks to the pre-existing E’ly swell. 

As for the longer term outlook, there’s a reasonable indication that we'll see continuing activity across a wide variety of swell windows over the next couple of weeks, which is very promising. 

See you Friday.