Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Monday 11th March)

Best Days: No great days. Maybe Wednesday afternoon once the onshore breeze eases, though the southerly swell will be abating by this time. Next week has a lot more potential.

Recap: Saturday offered small NE windswells ahead of a southerly change that pushed through mid-morning. Winds eased into Sunday and a long period S’ly groundswell pushed up the coast, peaking in the 3-4ft range at a handful of reliable south swell magnets north from Sydney to the Hunter region, with smaller surf elsewhere. This swell has eased overnight, and wave heights are now very small at most beaches. 

Next week (Mar 12 - 15)

Today’s Forecaster Notes are brought to you by Rip Curl

*this week's Forecaster Notes will be occasionally brief and erratic, as Craig is on annual leave*

Tuesday isn’t expected to see any major change from today, aside from a late S’ly change along the South Coast that’ll reach the Sydney region towards dinnertime. 

This change will last only a short time in our swell window, so the punchy south swell it generates for Wednesday morning will be short lived, initially peaking around 3-4ft+ at south facing beaches (upper end of this size mainly north from Sydney to the Hunter) but much smaller elsewhere, and easing throughout the day. 

Lingering onshore winds will take the sheen off surface conditions too. It’s really not worth getting too excited about.

The rest of the week looks pretty uninteresting.

We’ve got a bunch of weather systems sitting on the periphery of our swell window(s) but none are particularly strong so we won’t see any significant surf to round out the working week. These systems include:



• Small polar low attached to Tuesday’s front, but sitting close to the ice shelf: it’ll generate a small long period S’ly swell for Friday or thereabouts.


• Intensifying mid-latitude low just off the South Island of New Zealand on Wednesday; essentially an extension of the front trailing Tuesday’s change but it’ll develop in an awkward manner, tracking away form our region and against the great circle paths. So no major size is likely.
• A temporary ridge through the Tasman Sea Wednesday (in the lee of the change) of which a small trough will form along its eastern end into Thursday. The net benefit will be a small sideband E’ly swell that initially will be hardly noticeable beneath the easing mid-week S’ly swell anyway. We'll see a small SE swell from it into the weekend though.
• Small E’ly dip between New Caledonia and Fiji, sliding south but without any appreciable strength. It’ll hang around all week and provide small E/NE swell into the weekend, and we’ll see another trough form along its tail end into the weekend, that should kick up a better swell mid-next week. 
• A local trough may briefly spin up off the coast on Thursday and generate some local NE windswell for Friday, though I don’t have much confidence in this right now.
• And finally, a shallow S’ly change is due on Friday, though only small wind swells are likely to build into the afternoon as a result. 

This weekend (Mar 16 - 17)

Friday’s S’ly change is expected to be the northern extension of a decent polar front travelling north through our southern swell window. 

At this stage it’s not expected to display much strength, but this alignment - if it comes off - will be quite favourable for a reasonable south swell this weekend. Right now I don’t feel comfortable pegging wave heights more than 2-3ft at south facing beaches but it’ll be worth keeping an eye on for possible upgrades. 

We’ll also see small E/NE swell all weekend from the fetch north of New Zealand this week, and some small leftover SE swell from the ridge/trough combo in the Central Tasman Sea (see both below). No major size is likely though.

Some model guidance is suggesting we’ll see a coastal trough over the weekend with a strengthening E/NE infeed but it’s too early to pin down specifics right now. 

As a result, the local wind outlook for the weekend is difficult to predict so let’s see how Wednesday’s model runs are looking.



Next week (Mar 18 onwards)

There’s a lot of interesting features on the long term charts, some of which are quite plausible (broadening E’ly fetch NE of New Zealand over the weekend and into next week) and some of which are much less certain and require a variety of circumstances to eventuate (Cat 5 TC in the northern Coral Sea, and a concurrent deep low in the central/Southern Tasman Sea, otherwise a deepening coastal trough over Southern NSW).

In short, next week looks like being pretty dynamic but I’ll take a closer look on Wednesday.