Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 9th February)

Best Days: Most days should have small clean waves, mainly in the mornings whilst winds are favourably light. Late Thurs (more likely Fri) onwards is looking at a sustained period of large, long period E'ly swell.

Recap: Wednesday’s south swell eased steadily through Thursday (2ft+ sets early), and the afternoon’s freshening NE winds generated a small NE swell that provided minor peaky waves across exposed beaches this morning (2ft or so). The leading edge of a new long range S/SE arrived across the buoys a few hours ago and should build towards an overnight peak in size. 

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This weekend (Feb 10-11)

We’ve got a small weekend of waves with mainly light winds on hand. 

The new long period S/SE swell that arrived this afternoon will trend down through Saturday, and it’ll be super inconsistent. South facing beaches should see occasional 2ft+ sets (mainly north from Sydney to the Hunter region) and it’ll be smaller elsewhere with a mix of minor residual energy. Expect light variable winds and afternoon sea breezes. 

On Sunday, we’ll see a fun E’ly swell push across the coast, generated by a westward-tracking E’ly trough north of New Zealand over the last few days. Our in-house model is estimating 3ft sets but I feel this is probably a little generous, as the fetch came in slightly under model guidance and is also aimed mainly towards Northern NSW. 

Set waves should reach 2-3ft from this source through the middle of the day, and you’ll have get on it early as light variable winds through the morning will shift fresh S’ly into the afternoon (early down south, late north from Sydney).

So, there’ll be fun small waves both days, aim for the mornings. 

Next week (Feb 12 onwards)

Sunday’s late S’ly change won’t have much oomph in it, and we’re looking at a small mix of leftover swells for the first half of next week, mainly from the east - somewhere around an inconsistent 2ft+ Monday then easing from Tuesday onwards.

A small trough/low will linger off the coast early in the week, and a modest SE fetch around its southern flank will generate a small SE swell for Tuesday but I can’t see much more than occasional 2ft sets at open beaches at this stage (an upgrade is certainly possible though).

There’ll also be a small mid-range pulse of south swell from late Monday thru’ Tuesday, from a secondary low further south (SE of Tasmania) on Sunday though no great size is expected from this either.

A vigorous front exiting Bass Strait on Wednesday may generate a minor S’ly swell for Thursday, though again it’s expected to be pretty small and will also be flukey in which beaches it targets. Further strong fronts to the south of Tasmania on Thursday and Friday will generate small southerly groundswells for the weekend too, though at this stage they look like being pretty steep in direction so will only favour south swell magnets and the Hunter coast.

Now that’s all out of the way, let’s take a look at the real juicy stuff throughout the forecast period.

As has been discussed for the last few weeks, an active monsoon trough through the Tropical South Pacific is spinning off a series of tropical lows, and we’re now at a point where confidence is increasing significantly as to how this will all play out.

It now looks like we’ll see at least one severe Tropical Cyclone develop east of Fiji over the coming days, tracking eastwards before recurving to the south, then east before tracking straight through the South-western Pacific enroute to the Tasman Sea. 

Wind speeds within this system are expected to be very strong, and its westward track will help to enhance swell size and strength. At this stage the models have the leading edge into Southern NSW on Thursday with peak swell periods around 18 seconds (this is as high as it gets from this quadrant). 

Depending on how the cyclone behaves - i.e. just how far it tracks through the Tasman Sea - we’re looking at either moderate to large, or possible very large E’ly swells developing from Friday and persisting through next weekend, holding into Monday before easing from Tuesday onwards. 

How big? Its way too early to put a figure on it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the peak of the event pushes north of 8ft+ at its peak, sometime over the weekend. And there’s a very good chance that this could be significantly upgraded too.. anything is possible from this swell, to be honest - they're rare events, and we're still quite some time away in forecast model land.

But.. the take home message is that we’re looking at a large, long lived, long period swell event from Friday onwards. 

Time to start doing some cardio, y’reckon?