Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 14th June)

Best Days: Sun: fun S'ly swell building during the day. Tues: peaky E'ly swell. Thurs onwards: chance for a significant S/SE swell. 

Recap: A new long period S’ly swell built across Southern NSW on Thursday, with peak swell periods of 17-18 seconds. Although locations south from the Illawarra saw 3ft sets into the afternoon, we didn’t see an appreciable increase across Sydney beaches until just after dark, and wave heights likely peaked overnight, before easing throughout today. However, early Friday morning still managed inconsistent 2-3ft sets at south facing beaches (see pics below from the Northern Beaches), and conditions have been clean with light offshore winds. 

Fun S'ly swell on the Northern Beaches this morning

This weekend (June 15 - 16)

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I’m not expecting much surf on Saturday. Today’s south swell is on the way out and most beaches will be tiny, but south swell magnets (mainly north from Sydney across the Hunter) could see stray 1ft, maybe 1-2ft sets. Conditions will be clean with light variable winds. 

On Sunday, a new long period S’ly swell will fill in across the coast, generated by an intense cut-off low currently tracking below Tasmania. It’s poorly aligned and not travelling in an ideal trajectory (relative to our swell window), but the fetch is reasonably broad and core winds are very strong, so we should see a decent spread up the coast.

Timing is the key here. I don’t think the swell will quite be in the water at first light across Newcastle and maybe Sydney beaches, but south from the Illawarra we should be seeing an upwards trend by this time (it won’t be much longer after that we’ll see increasing size north from Sydney). 

A peak in size is expected through the mid-late afternoon, and most south facing beaches should see 2-3ft sets, with larger waves pushing 4ft at reliable south swell magnets such as the Hunter region. However expect much smaller surf at beaches with less southerly exposure. 

Also in the water most of the weekend (mainly Sunday) will be a tiny E/NE swell from a tropical system SE of Fiji mid-week. No major size is expected from this though. 

A weak trough over the coastal region should result in light variable winds but there is a threat of moderate onshores at times. In general we should do OK though.

Next week (June 17 onwards)

The coastal trough now looks like it’ll form a decent E’ly fetch into Monday, that should generate building surf through Tuesday, holding Wednesday, easing by Thursday. Wave heights should reach 3-5ft at the height of the event, though there’s been a lot of revisions in the last few model runs so I’ll update over the weekend as we see some consolidation in the outlook (it's not a high confidence event). A small short range NE swell is possible on Monday, prior to the proper E'ly energy kicking in, from an initial infeed into the trough on Sunday night.

An approaching cold front from the south is then expected to merge with the trough mid-week, intensifying the trough (possibly resulting in a closed low), and creating a much more significant swell generating system by the end of the week. We'll probably see a one-day, windy short range S'ly swell around Wednesday too as the change pushes through the western Tasman. 

However, there’s quite a few possible outcomes surf-wise from the merged system, because - at least with one current solution - it's expected to form close to the mainland (Far South Coast), and small deviations in the placement of the low to the west or east will either decrease or increase our chances of sizeable surf. Other model guidance is sufficiently varied to place little confidence in the long term outlook.

So, at this stage it’s impossible to commit to an actual size/timing beyond Wednesday, but there is certainly a very good chance that we’ll see some solid waves later next week and into the weekend.

More on this in Monday’s outlook.