Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Monday 12th November)

Best Days: Wed: peaky E/NE and NE swell combo, outside chance for OK winds. Thurs: easing E/NE swell with S'ly winds. Sat/Sun: chance for a Tasman Low and decent swell (though latest model runs have thrown a curveball).

Recap: Very small surf all weekend, holding into today. Light winds and sea breezes. 

This week (Nov 13 - 16 onwards)

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We’ve got building swells on the cards for the next few days, from two sources related to one primary synoptic system - a Tasman high.

A weak trough in the northern Tasman has tightened the easterly squeeze between the two, and this will kick up an E/NE swell through Tuesday (more likely the afternoon), peaking on Wednesday before easing slightly and leveling out through the rest of the week. This should generate a peak of 2-3ft surf at most open NE facing beaches (i.e. late Tues/Wed), though with fractionally smaller size as you head south from the Illawarra. 

Concurrently, an approaching trough from the west will tighten the pressure gradient along the high’s western flank, strengthening NE winds adjacent to the coast and generating a local NE windswell.

We’ll see a regionally similar size as per the E/NE swell, but in contrast, wave heights will be marginally bigger with increasing distance south of the Illawarra, thanks to a longer fetch length. If we’re super lucky, reliable NE swell magnets may pull in a few bigger sets as both swell trains combine.

Anyway, this discussion is rather fancy for what’s essentially going to be two windswells bolted on side-by-side. And with winds moderate from the NE in general, it’ll be hard to find a window of opportunity.

Tuesday morning’s initial slack period will likely be accompanied by undersized wave heights, but we may see some options open up on Wednesday as the approaching trough starts to influence the region, swinging local winds more to the north and potentially allowing periods of lighter conditions.

A shallow southerly change will then push across the coast during Thursday. Initially there won’t be much strength in it, so we’ll see slightly smaller E/NE (and more rapidly easing NE) swell under brisk but not-terrible southerly breezes. 

The trough will remain slow moving across the Northern NSW coast into Friday, and moderate to fresh southerly winds will hold in across Southern NSW, building windswells to 2-3ft at south swell magnets, but offering low quality surf due to the short period. Elsewhere, expect smaller E/NE swells to linger.

All in all, not a particularly inspirational week ahead.  

This weekend (Nov 17 - 18)

Over the last few days, the models have started to show some interest in a possible Tasman Low forming in the lee of the Thursday/Friday trough, and generating solid swells for the weekend. 

However, the last few runs have cooled this considerably so I’m going to be a little cautious in these notes. This recent downgrade could be an aberration, but I’m not keen to jump the gun on a significant swell event just yet.

Either way, as a bare minimum we’ll see small E/NE swells persisting over the weekend around the 2ft mark, and even a weakened trough/low in the Tasman Sea should generate a small S/SE swell for our region. 

Let’s take a closer pass on Wednesday.

Next week (Nov 19 onwards)

This possible weekend Tasman Low is also a part of next week’s surf potential, so we need to put a pause on any discussion around that source region for now (as interesting as the synoptics may look from time to time).

The only other area of interest is the tropical South Pacific, where we're expecting some developments during the middle to latter part of this week, likely culminating in a Tropical Cyclone (or possibly two) around the Vanuatu/Fiji region. 

Initially this system will reside in an unfavourable part of our swell window, but should broaden nicely through Thursday and Friday south of Fiji - which looks great on the synoptic charts (see below), until you assess the forward track, which pushes it eastwards, away from our coast.

As such, there’s plenty of potential in our E/NE swell window but it’s also highly likely that we’ll see only small surf resulting from these developments. More in Wednesday’s notes.