Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Monday 25th February)

Best Days: Most days should have fun waves. 

Recap: The weekend saw mainly fresh to occasionally strong southerly quadrant winds, though early Saturday offered a brief period of lighter S/SW winds across some coasts. The weekend's waves consisted of a small steady supply of NE swell from TC Oma (2-3ft) plus building S’ly swell that reached a peak on Sunday in the 5-6ft range at south facing beaches. Winds veered E/SE overnight Sunday and maintained messy conditions into this morning, and we’ve seen a secondary SE swell fill in underneath then easing S’ly swell, with 4-5ft sets across much of the coast. Conditions are improving this afternoon as the wind eases. 

This week (Feb 26 - Mar 1)

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All swell sources will ease through Tuesday. We’re pretty much back to a primary SE swell from the weekend’s front that stalled near New Zealand’s South Island, and size will slowly decrease from 3-4ft+ down to 2-3ft through Tuesday, before easing a little more into Wednesday. There's also some E/NE swell in the mix too.

Ex-TC Oma is now weakening steadily, but the supporting ridge to the south will remain active all week, albeit poorly positioned for our coast.

We’ll see rebuilding sideband E/NE swell from this system all week, though there probably won’t be a noticeable trend difference, as wave heights are likely to bottom out in the 2-3ft range on Wednesday before kicking up to 3ft+ into Thursday, and persisting around 2-3ft+ on Friday. So, we'll see user-friendly waves all week.

In fact, there’s a suggestion that a second ridge may form a little further south in the Tasman Sea from Thursday into Friday, and this may generate some additional mid-range swell to finish the week. 

We’ll also see a small front pass south of Tasmania on Tuesday, generate a small southerly swell for south facing beaches later Thursday and Friday (this front will be responsible for triggering the second Tasman ridge). No great size is expected from this south swell but occasional 2-3ft sets are likely at south friendly beaches.

With a slow moving high pressure system in the Tasman Sea all week, no significant synoptic wind is expected, so expect the standard pattern of light variable winds and sea breezes. 

This weekend (March 2 - 3)

We’ve got plenty of waves in store for the weekend.

The aforementioned secondary ridge in the Tasman Sea looks like it’ll kick up 2-3ft surf both days. There is a risk that the ridge will extend to the coast and deliver onshore winds, but at this stage they’re not expected to be very strong.

A developing tropical low north-west of the Samoan region (95P) is expected to track south over the coming days, possibly intensifying to Tropical Cyclone status, and will merge with the broad scale remnants of ex-TC Oma around Thursday, reinvigorating the Tasman ridge and extending it to the east into the South Pacific.

The tropical low will only be properly active in our swell window for a short period of time, and the large travel distance will erode its size potential. But, core winds are expected to be quite strong, so we should see some bigger sets in the mix over the weekend from this source - they’ll be very inconsistent, but should show at most breaks open to the north-east.

As such, I’m expecting a flush of E/NE groundswell from this system sometime on Saturday, persisting through Sunday before easing Monday. Max size should peak around 3-4ft. Let’s hope the wind doesn’t spoil the fun.

Next week (Mar 4 onwards)

Nothing significant showing up the charts for next week, just a stationary synoptic pattern and therefore likely a continuation of slow sideband E/NE swells from the Northern Tasman Sea.