Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Monday 5th November)

Best Days: Tues: inconsistent leftover south swell (only at south swell magnets), light winds south from Sydney (and early morning, north). Fri: leftover, easing S'ly swell with light winds and sea breezes. 

Recap: The last few days certainly haven’t disappointed in their promise for complex, flukey swells. Saturday saw a peaky NE swell in the 2ft range, and conditions were clean in the morning ahead of a freshening southerly from lunchtime onwards. Sunday delivered building southerly swells, though - as feared - many beaches didn’t pick up a lot of size. Most reports came in around the 3-4ft mark by the afternoon, and the long period energy tipped for a very late arrival wasn’t detected at the Port Botany buoy until the early hours of this morning, so we didn’t experience a boost in size as we’d hoped for. Interestingly Sunday afternoon delivered slightly larger surf across the Mid North Coast than in Sydney (3-5ft sets at Coffs Harbour late in the day) - which, given the ~12 hour travel time for a 12 second swell period event, means it was the same energy that reached Sydney early Sunday morning. Early light winds swung NE mid-Sunday morning and freshened throughout the rest of the day, confining the best waves to sheltered northern corners. Today has delivered mainly light winds for much of the day, along with pulsey southerly groundswells that initially saw undersized surf early morning (2-3ft) but rebuilt back up into the 4ft range at south facing beaches around lunchtime. 

This week (Nov 6 - 9)

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The big question for Tuesday is: will there be any leftover south swell?

With a lack of reliable buoy data to the south (mainly because several of 'em are offline), we have to look further afield. Victoria has been a useful proxy for the broader trend of the last few days - albeit twenty four hours ahead of us - and it’s seen easing through still strong surf persisting today. 

Extrapolating this into Southern NSW, and also comparing to model data (which expects a slight drop in swell size, with similar swell periods - see below), and it’d be fair to peg size at a very inconsistent 2-3ft at south facing beaches for Tuesday morning, ahead of an easing trend throughout the day.

There’s a few things I don’t like though - the early high tide (which caused problems right up and down the coast) and also the fickle nature of this particular south swell, which only favoured a handful of coasts. As the swell periods shift around and the swell direction veers a little more S of S/SW, we should see marginally better coverage throughout the region but away from south facing beaches I don’t think you’ll see much, if any swell. 

Nevertheless, the early surf will be your best bet with moving NW winds expected to swing to the NE and freshen throughout the day. These afternoon nor’easters will probably be confined to locations north of Sydney; a troughy pattern south from Sydney should maintain light winds all day. 

Tuesday’s NE flow (north from the Hunter through to the Mid North Coast) may whip up some small weak windswell for Wednesday but it’s unlikely we’ll see anything of note. Winds should be light all day but a southerly change will approach from the south into the afternoon. Expect small, lacklustre surf at most beaches. 

Thursday looks pretty average with freshening S/SW winds across the coast as a cold front merges with the coastal trough. We’ll see local windswells building to 3-5ft at south facing beaches but no great quality is expected. Size will be much smaller at beaches not open to the south.

Thursday's windswell will vanish into Friday, to be replaced by a mid-period southerly swell originating from the parent low (traversing the waters south of Tasmania on Wednesday) but no great size is likely, perhaps 3ft+ sets at south facing beaches, easing during the day, and very small elsewhere. Friday is probably the pick of the forecast period though as we’ll see lighter winds tend offshore ahead of afternoon sea breezes. 

This weekend (Nov 10 - 11)

Model guidance suggests a pretty slow weekend of small residual swells across Southern NSW. However there’s a couple of regions I’d like to keep a watch on this week, that have outside potential for new swell generation.

First up is a small polar low forming S/SW of New Zealand on Wednesday. It develops right on the eastern periphery of our swell window and isn’t very well aligned, but future updates may swing this in our favour.

Secondly, the trough/front responsible for Thursday’s change (and local swell) will clear to the east, taking up residence off New Zealand’s West Coast on Friday. Again, the various atmospheric models don’t favour a favourable alignment for our coast, but there’s always the chance this will move around over the coming days. 

Thirdly, we’re likely to see a local trough off the coast, and this also has some potential for local swell generation. In fact early next week is looking quite promising, but we can’t rule out the weekend just yet either.

Next week (Nov 12 onwards)

A broad, unstable trough off the coast over the weekend is expected to merge with a second trough further north, tracking southward, forming an easterly dip in the central/northern Tasman Sea on Sunday and kicking up a peaky short range E’ly swell for the first half of next week. Early size indications are in the 3-4ft range at some point in time, though I’ll fine tune this over the coming days.