Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Wednesday 27th November)

Best Days: Thurs: early light winds, small easing S'ly swells. Sat: peaky NE swell with a morning S'ly change. Tues onwards: plenty of decent S'ly swell all week, with good winds. Also some small E/NE swell in the mix. 

Recap: The last few days generally panned out as expected, with a small NE swell reaching 2ft+ on Tuesday with freshening offshore winds ahead of a late gusty S’ly change. Winds eased overnight and a stronger S’ly swell pushed up into the 4ft range this morning, with good surf at south facing beaches. Size is now easing slowly across the coast.

Nice lines on the Cenny Coast this morning

Fun S'ly swells on the Coal Coast

This week (Nov 28 - 29)

The low/front responsible for our current south swell has already exited the swell window, so we’re looking at a further easing of size into Thursday.

Early light winds will create clean conditions ahead of freshening NE winds, but with south facing beaches easing from an inconsistent 2ft to 1ft through the day, you’ll have to get in early for the most size. There’ll be a little more size across the Hunter, but beaches not open to the south will be much smaller. 

On Friday, we’ve got a day of mainly moderate to fresh N/NE winds on the cards, possibly lighter for a brief period but unlikely to swing offshore and clean up the lumps from overnight breezes. 

NE windswells should rebuild back into the 2ft+ range at most exposed beaches, and although south facing beaches will be much smaller, there’s also a chance for a few stray sets of S’ly groundswell from a poorly aligned front below Tasmania today.

I’m doubtful that many beaches will see any swell from this source, as it’ll probably just glance the coast through the day (greater chance in the afternoon, than in the morning), however a handful of reliable south swell magnets - such as the Hunter region - could pick up the odd 2-3ft set if we’re lucky. 

This weekend (Nov 30 - Dec 1)

A weak front will cross the Southern NSW coast overnight Friday, disrupting the N/NE fetch in our immediate swell window and bringing a southerly change sometime during Saturday morning. 

Initially, Saturday morning should have some slow, peaky NE swell on offer - somewhere between 2ft to very occasionally 3ft - but size will ease throughout the day and the developing southerly breeze will confine the best waves to sheltered southern ends. 

Troughiness will become re-established across the coast into Sunday, resulting in early light winds and NE sea breezes, and at this stage there won’t be much surf on offer, just a foot or two of slow, weak surf from the north-east and south. Really nothing overly special but rideable if you’ve got the right kind of gear. 

Next week (Dec 2 onwards)

As mentioned on Monday, an amplifying Long Wave Trough across SE Australian longitudes from about Sunday onwards will drive powerful fronts into Victoria and Tasmania through the early to middle part of next week. 

Current expectations are that the storm track may end up residing just on the unfavourable side of the Tasmanian divide - i.e. just outside of our swell window (see chart below) - and this has reduced next week’s southerly swell potential quite considerably.

At the moment we're looking at one or two peaks in size between Tuesday and Friday that could reach 3-4ft at south facing beaches - however if the LWT ends up sliding a little further east (i.e. better positioned in the Tasman Sea) then we can double, or possibly almost triple these estimates. It’s expected to be a broad, powerful, slow moving pattern that will deliver a sustained period of very large S’ly swell for some coasts - but at this stage it looks like they’ll mainly be located west of Wilsons Promontory.

Anyway, it’s quite an exciting weather pattern to be watching, so let’s take a closer look on Friday to hone in on the specifics. 

Also worth mentioning is a broad though modest-strength sub-tropical low developing well NE of New Zealand over the coming days (see below) that appears be just north enough of the NZ swell shadow to allow for a small spread of E/NE swell into Southern NSW early next week. At this stage the expected S’ly swells will probably be more dominant, but it’ll be worth keeping an eye on this South Pacific system as it’s firmed up nicely over the last few model runs.