Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Monday 30th April)

Best Days: Tues: easing SE swell with mainly light winds.

Recap: The weekend offered good SE swells though winds were mainly out of the south, which created tricky conditions at times (some regions saw brief pockets of W/SW winds, mainly early mornings). Surf size held around 3-4ft in Sydney and 4-5ft across the Hunter both days, though Sunday afternoon saw a late pulse to 4-5ft across Sydney beaches that held into this morning, with light offshore winds prevalent across a couple of coastlines (such as the Northern Beaches.. see image below from our daily surf report). Wave heights eased for a period during the middle of the day, though surfcam observations a short time ago show a renewal of size across the Northern Beaches. Winds are once again around the south for the afternoon session. 

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Manly on the pump this morning

Late sets at Queenscliff

This week (May 1 - 4) 

The low pressure system in the north-eastern Tasman Sea didn’t behave quite as expected over the weekend, according to ASCAT satellite data anyway. I can’t find much evidence to support Friday’s expectations for a secondary E/SE fetch within our swell window, which was expected to maintain SE swell into tomorrow. 

So even though there are still strong sets showing across Sydney beaches this afternoon, I’m going to pare down my expectations for Tuesday. Conditions should be clean with mainly light morning winds and afternoon NE breeze but we’re probably looking at inconsistent 2-3ft sets across most open beaches, maye a few bigger bombs if we're lucky. Size will ease throughout the day too.

The rest of the week looks rather non-descipt, with a series of weather systems skirting the periphery of various swell windows, resulting in small flukey swells across exposed beaches. Freshening northerly winds Wednesday and Thursday will precede a shallow westerly change Friday.

There’s a chance for a minor NE windswell on Friday, originating from Thursday’s freshening winds, but I don’t think it’ll amount to much. So, Friday’s clean conditions will probably go to waste with small peaky surf at best.

This weekend (May 5 - 6)

A series of fronts will cross the Tasmanian divide from Friday through Saturday, but they’ll remain poorly aligned within our flukey short range south swell window. There’s certainly a chance for two brief flushes of south swell this weekend - one on Saturday and one on Sunday (the latter looking to have the most potential) but aside from reliable south swell magnets across the Hunter, it’s likely most Southern NSW beaches - even south facing beaches - will dip out.

As such, keep your expectations low and/or your best high volume board ready to go for the weekend, as it’s looking to be pretty small. Though, clean with mainly favourable winds. 

Next week (May 7 onwards)

A stronger cut-off low is expected to form in the Southern Tasman Sea later this weekend, which suggests a strong south swell for early next week. That’s probably the most positive aspect of the entire forecast period at this stage.