Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Wednesday 2nd April)

Best Days: Sat PM, Sun: fun south swell at exposed south facing beaches. 

Recap: E/SE swell held in nicely across Southern NSW on Tuesday, with 3ft+ sets across most open beaches and light offshore winds keeping conditions clean. We’ve seen slightly smaller (though bigger than expected) residual swell today with similarly clean conditions. There’ve been plenty of reports of excellent banks up and down the coast too.

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This week (May 3 - 4) 

Our swell windows are largely devoid of activity at the moment, which means small surf for the rest of the week. Thursday may see some small residual energy from today but this event is on the way out so don’t expect much size, even at reliable swell magnets. Smaller surf is expected through Friday.

Early light NW winds Thursday morning will tend N/NE into the afternoon and freshen though won’t be strong enough to whip up any notable windswell. A passing frontal system on Friday will bring about a fresh westerly change that'll brush the ocean clean.

This weekend (May 5 - 6)

Friday’s frontal passage across the southern regions will be quite strong, and a series of secondary fronts will maintain gale force W/SW winds out of eastern Bass Strait for a day or two. This will generate a poorly aligned round of south swell for Southern NSW, arriving in two stages - the first sometime later Saturday morning across Sydney’s south facing beaches, with a second swell pushing through on Sunday.

Model guidance has almost reversed the priority of these swells, with Saturday afternoon’s energy now likely to provide the most size. There’s also been a minor upgrade thanks to the strength of the fetch and a slight tweak in its alignment. 

Sydney’s reliable south facing beaches should see 2ft, almost 2-3ft sets developing throughout Saturday afternoon (smaller elsewhere, and only tiny early morning) and we’ll see bigger waves through the Hunter pushing 3-4ft at times. In general, this size range should persist into Sunday though it may fluctuate a little throughout the day (so, expect periods of smaller waves at times).

However, this swell will be very steep (in direction) and as a consequence, those beaches without favourable southerly exposure will be very small, even flat at times. This will be a low percentage event across the coast.

Both Saturday and Sunday look to be clean with offshore winds. Let’s refine the specifics on Friday. 

Next week (May 7 onwards)

The models have cooled on the idea of a cut-off low in the Southern Tasman Sea later this weekend (pushing it quickly through to NZ), so surf potential early next week looks on the small side with several intermittent flushes of south swell originating from a strong Southern Ocean storm track. We’ll have a better idea on this in Friday’s updated forecast.