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

Best Days: No great days, though we'll see peaky beachbreaks and workable conditions for much of the forecast period. Later Wed (next week) onwards has promise for a fun E/NE swell. 

Recap: Tiny leftover surf and light winds on Tuesday gave way to a late gusty S’ly change and a building though bumpy S’ly swell today as winds veer moderate to fresh SE.

Next week (Mar 14 - 15)

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The fetch responsible for today’s southerly swell is already easing through our swell window so we’re looking at slowly abating surf throughout this afternoon, and further into Thursday.

Much lighter winds will swing around to the east/north-east on Thursday as a small high sets up camp in the Tasman Sea. This high, although not terribly strong, will influence our winds through the rest of the week with occasional periods of moderate breezes. No major strength is expected however the chances of pockets of light variable winds will be slightly less than usual. So keep your expectations a little lower than normal.


As for surf, there isn’t a great deal of excitement expected for the next few days.

We’ll see a couple of peripheral sources generate slow, inconsistent 2ft sets at exposed beaches: a modest E’ly fetch way out north-east from New Zealand is generating background E/NE swells, whilst a small polar low somewhat related to last night’s S’ly change may generate some small S’ly swell for Friday. We’ll see residual S’ly swell on Thursday too, leftover from today.

Probably the most relevant swell source for the next few days is a small ridge developing in the central Tasman Sea in the wake of last night’s change. It’s not expected to be very large nor very strong but it is positioned reasonably close to the mainland so we shouldn’t see too much size decay. 

The models aren’t too keen on this system but I think we’ll see a slow building trend into the 2ft, almost 2-3ft range (E/SE) into Thursday afternoon, before pulsing intermittently around this size range Friday. Set waves will be lacking strength but there’ll be peaky options at exposed spots. Expect smaller surf from this source south of the Illawarra. 

This weekend (Mar 16 - 17)

The erratic light/mod onshore pattern tipped for the end of this week (which may or may not influence the coastal margin) is expected to linger into Saturday before the pressure gradient relaxes a touch into Sunday, leading to a more typical day of light morning winds and afternoon sea breezes. 

The weekend’s waves will consist of two of the same sources expected on Friday: the stationary trade flow north-east of New Zealand, and the small ridge through the Tasman Sea. They’ll contribute small levels of E/SE and E/NE swell, with set waves slow and inconsistent but somewhere between 2ft to very nearly 2-3ft at times. 

If you had to pick a day, Sunday has the best potential wind-wise but I don’t think there’ll be difference in it.

Keep your expectations low and you may be pleasantly surprised at some of the more reliable beach breaks.

Next week (Mar 18 onwards)

On Friday, a tropical system is expected to begin slowly deepening south from Tonga, before driving south through our distant E/NE swell window.

This will generate a fun E/NE swell event that’ll build on top of the slow inconsistent surf seen over the weekend (that'll persist into early next week) - we’re not looking at an arrival until about Wednesday next week, but we’ll see surf size build more prominently into Thursday with set waves reaching somewhere in the 3-4ft range, holding into Friday morning before slowly easing. It'll be extremely inconsisistent but probably a worthwhile event to work around.

Elsewhere a small cut off low in the Southern Tasman Sea early next week looks like it’ll be too weak and poorly aligned to generate any notable swell for us, though a minor flush of sideband S/SE energy can’t be ruled out.

There are other sources still popping up on the long term synoptic charts but they still don’t look very plausible as swell sources for our region at the moment. But I’ll keep a watch and will update in more detail on Friday.