Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Monday 2nd July)

Best Days: Wed/Thurs/Fri: small peaky E/NE swell (biggest Thurs). Thurs PM, Fri AM: small inconsistent S'ly swell. 

Recap: Small residual swells padded out Saturday and early Sunday ahead of an afternoon pulse of S’ly swell that produced fun 2ft waves across open south facing beaches, up to 3ft in Newcastle. Size has eased back a little today and winds have been funky - variable in parts but onshore in others. 

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This week (July 3 - 6)

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Note: Today’s Forecaster Notes will be brief, as Craig is away on annual leave

We've got a tricky week ahead with only flukey swell sources to work around.

The broader synoptic pattern isn’t favouring Southern NSW at the moment. All swell generating activity is forming on the peripheries of our swell window(s) and therefore we’re not expecting a lot of size and consistency over the coming days. 

Probably the most interesting/reliable source in the short term is a deepening trough off the Far Northern NSW coast that the models are still not properly resolving. There’s been a few interesting upgrades in the last few runs but it’s hard to have confidence for our region as the main fetch will be aimed into Northern NSW, so we’ll see only a small spread of E/NE across our coast. 

We should start to see some slow movement upwards from about Tuesday afternoon onwards, before wave heights build more convincingly through Wednesday ahead of a peak on Thursday in the 2-3ft+ range at NE facing beaches. I will keep an eye on tonight's and tomorrow's model runs though, as this outlook may possibly be upgraded a little.

A developing ridge across the Northern Tasman Sea will then maintain background E/NE energy into Friday and the start of the weekend.

Also on our radar this week is a small flush of long period S’ly swell from a polar low currently skirting the Ice Shelf well south of Tasmania (see below). It’s a broad system but moving quickly through our swell window and the large travel distance will erode a considerable percentage of size by the time it make landfall. 

The leading edge of this swell should reach Southern NSW during Thursday morning and the Sydney region by lunchtime, with surf size building into the afternoon offering extremely inconsistent 2-3ft sets at south swell magnets late in the day - though given core wind strengths of 50kts+, reliable swell magnets could see more size than this (I'm reluctant to commit to a size). Wave heights will then ease slowly from Friday morning onwards; early morning should still have some decent sets at south facing beaches. 

As for conditions, light winds are expected for the next few days ahead of freshening N/NW winds from late Wednesday through Thursday. They’ll probably veer NW into the afternoon then strengthen from this direction on Friday as a series of vigorous fronts slide through Bass Strait.

So, Thursday and early Friday are the pick of the period at this stage, though there’ll be small peaky waves Wednesday too.  

This weekend (July 7 - 8)

With this week’s swell sources expected to ease into the weekend, we have to look further afield for decent surf prospects. 

Unfortunately, Friday’s front through Bass Strait will be poorly aligned (slightly north of west) so our south swell potential is bleak for Saturday. We’ll have to make do with small E/NE trade swell leftover from the end of the week. 

A better positioned secondary front will push out of eastern Bass Strait overnight Saturday and into Sunday morning, but any swell we see from it probably won’t arrive until the end of the day. Let’s fine tune the arrival time in Wednesday’s notes, but at this stage we're probably looking at small waves both days.

Next week (Just 9 onwards)

A very active phase of the Long Wave Trough is impacting WA at the moment, and it’s expected to slide through SA and Vic’s swell windows later this week. 

It’ll eventually push across Tasmanian longitudes later this weekend, so we’re potentially looking at a series of large southerly groundswells from early next week, holding for three or four days. More on this in Wednesday’s update.