Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Wednesday 13th February)

Best Days: Stacks of surf from several directions plus good winds most days. No great size but decent across the open beachies. 

Recap: Let’s call it an over-correction. To be honest, whilst I’m a little disappointed that Friday’s 3-5ft forecast for Tuesday’s E/NE swell ended up being very close compared to Monday's downgrade, I’m kinda glad in this instance that I pulled back the size estimate in Monday's forecast - sometimes it’s better to undercall and be pleasantly surprised if size exceeds expectations. As it is, it was very hard to maintain confidence from such a remote, tricky fetch positioned the edge of the NZ swell shadow, at a time when the models had (unexplainably) removed all reference of that swell train when Monday’s notes were being prepared (ironically, it reappeared on Tuesday, though we’re not really sure why). Anyway, to recap: in addition to a small NE windswell, Tuesday saw building E/NE swell to 3-4ft throughout the day, and a handful of locations reported bigger sets pushing 4-5ft at times. The lines were very straight and well defined, and conditions were superb with freshening offshore winds. A gusty S’ly change pushed through overnight and we’ve seen steady E’ly swell in the 3ft+ range today plus a building S’ly swell to 3-4ft, though conditions haven’t been great; early SW winds giving way to gusty S/SE breezes. 

Nice E/NE swell at Manly Tuesday afternoon

This week (Feb 14 - 15)

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We’ve got a multitude of swell sources for the next few days but they’re all originating from weather systems on the peripheries of our swell windows, aimed poorly into our region. So we’ll see glancing energy for the most part, though there’ll still be some reasonable size around. 

Fortunately, aside from a possible early period of leftover S’ly winds Thursday morning - mainly north from Sydney across the Hunter - conditions should be pretty good both days with light winds and sea breezes. 

Interestingly raw model data suggests the E’ly swell from today will lift a little, with swell heights increasing by almost a foot and periods increase by half a second. The particulars aren’t of interest, but the trend must be noted: I’m hesitant to suggest even more size than the inconsistent 3ft+ sets we saw today, but it places caution on any suggestion of a drop in size. 

So I’ll hold steady with inconsistent 2-3ft+ sets across exposed beaches for Thursday, with very long breaks between the sets; perhaps a small decrease in size throughout the day. 

We’ll see easing mid range S’ly swell from today, but also a building longer period (15-16 second) S’ly swell originating from the (poorly aligned) parent low south of Tasmania yesterday. This should offer 2ft+ sets at south facing beaches in the morning, ahead of a little more size into the afternoon around 3ft+. The Hunter may pick up slightly bigger sets than this late in the day too.

As for Friday, its likely that all of Thursday’s sources will ease back a touch. However exposed beaches are still likely to see occasional 2-3ft sets and early light winds will make for lovely clean conditions ahead of the afternoon sea breezes. 

This weekend (Feb 16 - 17)

There’s stacks of swell for the weekend though no major size is expected.

First off, a continuation of poorly-aligned fronts south of Tasmania will continue to offer occasional 2-3ft southerly sets to south facing beaches, both days. It’ll be intermittent in frequency and patchy in coverage but there’ll be options at exposed beaches. 

Otherwise, the other primary swell source for the weekend is a combination of broad systems merging near the confluence of the Northern Tasman Sea, Coral Sea and South Pacific (see chart below).

Essentially, we’ve got a broad gyre-scale atmospheric circulation encompassing all three basins as a slow moving monsoon trough moves across the tropics, containing an embedded tropical cyclone (TC Oma) and two tropical lows (92P, 93P).

TC Oma is out of our swell window, and the two tropical lows - whilst retrograding nicely to the west within our swell window - are only small in diameter and fetch length. 

As such, the best swell potential will occur as the broad scale system interacts with a Tasman high pressure system, forming a broad, stationary SE fetch aimed into the Coral Sea. Now, this is poorly aligned for our region but its slow moving characteristic will be favourable for a steady spread of small sideband E’ly swell over the weekend. Ordinarily a short lived fetch of this nature would be worth less size, but because it's slow moving, I'm going to bump up estimates a bit.

The models aren’t keen on too much size but I thinking we’ll see 2-3ft surf building through Saturday ahead of bigger waves on Sunday pushing 3-4ft at times. This is probably a little optimistic and we’ll likely see small surf south as you head south (say, from about the Illawarra) but with clean conditions under a light and variable/sea breeze pattern it looks like the weekend will have a fun mix of peaky swells across most coasts.

Next week (Feb 18 onwards)

There’s some pretty exciting model progs for the Coral Sea and South Pacific next week, though they’re still not consolidating very well between model runs. In particular there’s a chance for a major Tropical Cyclone in the Coral Sea mid-next week, but it’s too early to tell if it’ll favour SE Qld and North NSW (let along Southern NSW, which is largely out of its alignment).

Regardless, this region will be the focal point for activity over the next week or two with a steady stream of E/NE swells on the cards. Let’s see how things are shaping up on Friday.