Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Wednesday 4th December)

Best Days: Great waves every day! As long as your beach likes southerly swells.

Recap: We’ve had plenty of fun S’ly swell over the last few days, with both Tuesday and Wednesday seeing 2-3ft surf across Sydney’s south facing beaches, and up to 4ft across the Hunter. Conditions have been clean with early offshore winds and light to moderate afternoon sea breezes. A new pulse of slightly bigger southerly swell is still on the cards for later today.

Newy on the pump this arvo

This week (Dec 5 - 6)

A quick glance at the latest model guidance suggests a slowly building swell today, then easing slowly Thursday before bottoming out on Friday. 

As per Monday’s notes, I still don’t think this is an accurate reflection of what’s going to happen in the surf zone. Not so much with Thursday’s trend, but the low surf size on Friday is a little misleading.

Our current southerly swells are the byproduct of a powerful though off-axis and slightly shadowed storm track underneath Tasmania, and through the lower Tasman Sea. As such, the wave models are having a hard time resolving the energy bending back into Southern NSW, when they’re aimed towards New Zealand.

And because there are likely to be multiple swell trains in the water at any one time, it’s hard to be totally sure whether the expected surf will consist partially, or completely of new building swell, or old, easing swell. 

The slight increase pegged for this afternoon should hold into Thursday morning, somewhere in the 3ft+ range at south facing beaches early (and 4ft+ across the Hunter) though a slight easing trend is likely through the day. Note: I have pulled this estimate back a touch (from Monday), because today has yet to show an appreciable kick in size as initially expected - but it may just be running a few hours late. So, there’s still a chance for a few bigger waves at dawn. 

Late afternoon, the South Coast is likely to see the next swell front move along the coast, generated by the least-favourably-aligned though still quite strong SW fetch south of Tasmania. In fact, this fetch has been near-stationary for the last day or so, which increases its swell potential. 

I’m expecting this energy to be in the water across most coasts by Friday morning (actually, we may see a secondary kick into the afternoon from another embedded pulse), but it’s hard to have confidence in the likely size - not just because the models aren’t keen on this event - but because the poorly aligned fetch means that a smaller percentage of south facing beaches will pick up the upper end of the expected size range, compared to straight southerly swells generated immediately within our swell window.

Therefore, I’m sticking with the outlook I issued Monday, which is that a handful of reliable south facing beaches could see occasional 3-5ft sets at times on Friday, though there will be very long breaks between the sets, and we’ll see disproportionally smaller surf at most beaches because of the flukey swell source. So keep your expectations a little on the low size and you should be pleasantly surprised.

That being said, the Hunter usually enjoys these kinds of swells so 5-6ft+ bombs are possible across this region at the swell magnets. 

Conditions look good both days with light variable winds in the morning, though onshores are likely into the afternoon. Make the most of what you see in front of you (aim to surf before lunch if you can).

This weekend (Dec 7 - 8)

We’ve got a great weekend of south swell ahead.

The primary low to the fronts generating this week’s southerly swells will finally push out from underneath Tasmania from Friday onwards, generating a series of southerly swells that will maintain plenty of energy from Saturday through Monday.

At this stage, early Saturday may see a slight easing from Friday, but a small kick is expected into the afternoon, ahead of two slightly stronger swells - one arriving overnight Saturday and then another on Sunday afternoon. 

Therefore, Sunday is looking at the most size - probably 3-5ft south facing beaches, bigger near 5-6ft across the Hunter - but Saturday shouldn’t be too much smaller.

Elsewhere, expect much smaller surf size at beaches not properly exposed to the south.

Conditions look great both days with light winds and sea breezes. It’ll be well worth getting out and about, looking for a beach with a reasonable degree of southerly exposure. 

Next week (Dec 9 onwards)

The weekend’s strong southerly swell should hold into Monday but will slowly ease through the day. Early light winds will freshen from the N/NE through the day as an inland trough develops across the eastern states. 

These winds will become a little more gusty into Tuesday though we’ll see rapidly easing south swells by this time. Small NE windswells should build into the 2ft+ range during the day but quality won’t be high. 

As the trough clears to the east on Wednesday, southerly winds forming in its lee will generate fresh southerly windswells though no major size is expected. 

Otherwise, the rest of the week looks a little nondescript. We have a small south swell due at the end of the week from passing frontal systems below Tasmania mid-week, but it’s not worth getting excited about yet. There’s also a potential tropical cyclone in the Coral Sea next week, but it’s too far away - in both time, and geographical distance - to be considered a swell source as yet.  

See you Friday!