Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Monday 5th August)

Best Days: Tues/Wed AM: solid S'ly swell, light winds. Thurs: small leftover S'ly swell, freshening offshore winds. Sun thru' Thurs: extended run of solid, occasionally sizeable S'ly swell.

Recap: Saturday morning saw an early peak in S’ly swell with occasional 4-6ft sets at south facing beaches (biggest across the Hunter) under an early light offshore airstream, before size eased through the day. Sunday dawned smaller around 3ft, but a new swell filled in across some south facing beaches into the afternoon up around 4-5ft+. We’ve seen occasional 4-6ft sets on offer at south facing beaches this morning with light winds again maintaining clean conditions. 

This week (August 6 - 9)

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The slow moving LWT across New Zealand latitudes over the weekend delivered snow to sea level across the South Island.

The associated fronts were slightly off-kilter for our swell window, but the fetch length has been very impressive and an intense polar low at the bottom of the system (just off the ice shelf) displayed a nice core of 50kt+ winds yesterday, of which the associated swell energy will arrive across Southern NSW tomorrow. 

As such, despite the swell charts showing much smaller surf for the next few days (it’s resolving the periods well, but not the swell size), I am holding steady with occasional 4-6ft waves pulsing across south facing beaches on Tuesday and perhaps early Wednesday - though an easing trend will kick in by then and we’ll see surf size ease to 3-4ft through the day. 

I’m also expecting a brief period of slightly larger waves, mainly across reliable south swell magnets and offshore bombies, where the longer periods should help to focus and magnify surf size up over 6ft for a few hours. This is likely to occur sometime Tuesday morning (give or take - obviously earlier in the south, a little later in the north). Keep an eye out for a jump in swell periods to 17-18 seconds at the regional buoys, which should signify its imminent arrival. 

Local conditions look great for the next few days with light winds under a weak pressure gradient. 

On Wednesday, a small but intense cut off low will pass just south of Tasmania (see image below). Although core winds look to be very strong, the narrow fetch width and poor alignment means we probably won’t see much, if any size across Southern NSW. As such, I’m not expecting any energy from this system, and suspect the rest of the week will be mainly serviced by steadily easing swell from the current/impending event. 

This means we could be looking at just small residual surf to 1-2ft to finish the working week: model guidance has 0.5m at 13 seconds on Friday, but in contrast to tomorrow’s undercall, I think this is a slight overcall. Winds will freshen from the west which will keep conditions clean, though it may become a little blustery at times. With only small flukey swells likely to be on offer, it’s not worth getting too excited about Friday's surf prospects.

This weekend (August 10 - 11)

A small polar low will merge with the small mid-week cut-off low below Tasmania around Thursday (see image above), and the associated S’ly fetch developing between the two will kick up a small S’ly swell for Saturday around 2ft at south facing beaches. 

Surface conditions will be rather blustery though as a complex upper and surface low moves across the SE corner of the country around the same time, strengthening NW thru’ W’ly winds before the surface low consolidates in the southern Tasman Sea, and strong S/SW winds develop across Southern NSW at some point on Sunday.

As such, we’re looking at large, wind affected surf on Sunday with at least 6ft+ of short range energy (maybe more) and fresh SW tending S/SW winds. 

Let’s fine tune the specifics in Wednesday’s update. 

Next week (August 12 onwards)

Looks like another node of the LWT will amplify in our prime south swell window next weekend, slingshotting a series of strong fronts from polar latitudes into the southern Tasman Sea, and generating another lengthy spell of strong, sizeable S’ly groundswell that’ll hold into next Wednesday or Thursday. There’s a chance for some pretty big waves from this progression too (check the strength of the polar low at the tail end of the fetch, below!), but we’ll need to monitor the model trends over the coming days.