Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 19th October)

Best Days: Sat: brief window of light winds, fun E/NE swell. Sun: southern corners under an easing E/NE swell and S'ly breeze. 

Recap: No shortage of surf over the last few days with NE thru’ E/NE swells holding 3-4ft+, but Thursday morning saw only a brief period of early light winds before the nor’easter cropped up. Today’s seen a longer spell of light winds (up until lunchtime) of which the coast has been blanketed by fog - initially the Eastern Beaches and Cronulla this morning, but the Northern Beaches saw a full pea-souper roll in around 2pm (see surfcam image below). This is related to a warm, moist airstream pushing across a cool ocean - accentuated by this week's drop in sea surface temps due to upwelling, in the order of a couple of degrees.

This weekend (Oct 20 - 21)

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There won’t be any shortage of surf this weekend. However, conditions will be quite mixed.

A broad trough in the central/northern Tasman Sea has strengthened over the last few days and it’s generating a fresh pulse of E/NE swell that’ll slowly build through Saturday ahead of a peak in the afternoon, before easing on Sunday. Early Saturday morning should manage similar size as per today (inconsistent 3-4ft sets at exposed beaches) but by the afternoon we should start to see wave heights more towards 3-5ft surf across reliable swell magnets. There’ll also be some short range NE swell in the mix too.

However, winds look tricky on Saturday as a southerly change slowly moves up the Southern NSW coast. It’s only expected to reach the South Coast late afternoon and will push across the Sydney region overnight; ahead of it we’ll see freshening N/NE winds though a period of light N’ly winds are likely early Saturday morning. So, this will be the best time to surf though it will coincide with the smallest surf of the day.

Saturday’s overnight southerly change has been marginally bolstered in recent runs, and we’re looking at a mix of slowly easing E/NE swell (3-4ft down to 2-3ft), plus some building southerly windswell in the lee of the change. Not all of the models are in agreeance on this, though unusually the US solution (which underpins our wave height model) is downplaying the strength of the fetch, which I am going to forecast above - I reckon we’ll see 3ft, maybe 3-4ft sets at south swell magnets by Sunday afternoon. 

However quality will be low at these locations under a fresh S’ly breeze, and you’ll be best off aiming for southern ends to maximise the easing E/NE swell under much cleaner conditions. 

Next week (Oct 22 onwards)

We’ve still got a lot of potential for next week, but nothing concrete at this stage aside from Monday seeing easing E/NE and S'ly swells from Sunday.

A slow moving high near New Zealand and a surface trough north of Fiji will maintain a steady trade flow through this region, feeding into a broad trough across the Western Tasman Sea. No major surf is expected from the trade flow but it’ll be enough to stop the open beaches from becoming flat. 

An approaching short wave trough (read: cold front) from the west will activate the western Tasman trough overnight Tuesday and into Wednesday, though at this stage there’s no signs of any major swell generating system - sure, we may see a brief, punchy mid-week south swell but current indications it’ll be bog standard for this time of the year.  

Otherwise, long term modelling maintains the troughy pattern across the eastern states which'll continue the pause on significant swell potential - all of the ingredients are setting there, it’s just the timing is slightly out at the moment. But I’m confident we’ll see something major materialise in the models over the coming days for this neck of the woods (likely for the end of next week or the weekend). If anything happens over the weekend I'll update in the comments below.

See you Monday!