Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Wednesday 25th September)

Best Days: Most days should have fun waves with generally light winds and a series of S'ly swells; Thurs will see the biggest waves. Sat is a little dicey in the wind department though.

Recap: Small residual E’ly swell early Tuesday was overtaken by an afternoon pulse of new S/SE swell that’s slowly built into today. We’re now seeing 2-3ft sets at south facing beaches (closer to 4ft in the Hunter), and conditions have been generally good with light morning winds and moderate afternoon sea breezes. 

New S'ly swell starting to show across the Manly stretch this morning

This week (Sep 26 - 27)

No major changes to the short term forecast. 

The frontal progression through the south-eastern Tasman Sea is progressing nicely, reaching maximum intensity this morning. As such we’re looking at a further increase in S/SE swell into Thursday, in fact with today coming in strongly I have marginally increased tomorrow afternoon’s projected peak just a little - most south facing beaches should reach 3-5ft, with slightly bigger surf through the Hunter near 4-5ft+. 

Early morning may be a little undersized across Sydney and Hunter coasts, and anywhere not directly exposed to the south will be smaller. Light morning winds and light to moderate afternoon sea breezes (from the NE) will maintain reasonably favourable conditions, best early in the day. 

Wave heights will trend down through Friday, initially 3ft to maybe 3-4ft at south facing beaches (4-5ft across the Hunter) but down by a foot or so into the afternoon. Again, light morning winds and afternoon sea breezes will maintain favourable conditions, and surf size will be smaller at non-south facing beaches.

This weekend (Sep 28 - 29)

We’ve had a change in the weekend winds, with a weak front now expected to clip the coast early Saturday. It won’t be particularly strong but will roughen up exposed beaches, however it will concurrently rebuild short range S’ly swells to south facing beaches with 3ft+ sets at times (smaller elsewhere). There’ll be OK waves but don’t get your hopes up.

Sunday looks much better with early light offshore winds and afternoon sea breezes, and easing S’ly swells from 2-3ft at south facing beaches, down to 1-2ft by lunchtime, and smaller options elsewhere. The Hunter coast should pick up a few bigger waves but you’ll have to aim for an early session as it’ll be pretty small by the afternoon. 

Next week (Sep 30 onwards)

We’ve got another round of Southern Ocean fronts expected to nose into the south-eastern Tasman Sea from Sunday onwards, that’ll generate another run of overlapping S’ly tending S/SE swell from Monday probably through until Thursday or maybe even Friday next week. No major size is expected at this stage but it’ll certainly keep south facing beaches flush with fun south swell for much of the week. 

More on this in Friday’s update.