Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Monday 20th July)

Best Days: Tues/Wed: solid S'ly swell, a little wind affected Tues but clean with light winds Wed. Thurs: smaller but clean. Fri: reasonably solid though inconsistent pulse of new S/SE swell, early light winds. Next week: large E/NE tending E'ly swell. 

Recap: The weekend delivered excellent large waves, easing from 6-8ft on Saturday morning to 5-6ft Sunday and 3-4ft this morning. Conditions were generally clean with mainly light variable tending offshore winds. 

Shark Island on Sunday

This week (July 21 - 24)

Our extended run of SE swell will continue to slowly ease into Tuesday, and should be essentially gone by Wednesday afternoon.

However, there’s plenty of new swell on the way. 

A strong front rocketing through the lower Tasman Sea today has generated a fresh S’ly swell that’ll peak in size on Tuesday and then ease only slowly through Wednesday, thanks to the low moving nature of the parent low to the south.

Compared to the last week of swell, which - thanks to its origins out of the eastern quadrant, resulting in a broad spread of size across most regions - we’re looking at a much wide range in wave heights over the coming days. South facing beaches should pick up 5-6ft sets on Tuesday, with larger 6-8ft sets at exposed bombies and the Hunter region, however it’ll be much smaller at beaches not open to the south.

Winds will be mainly SW tending S/SW through the day, at moderate to fresh strength through early morning should see a decent period of W/SW winds at many locations. 

Wednesday’s easing swell will abate slowly from 4-6ft at south facing beaches at dawn to 3-5ft by lunchtime, and a little smaller into the afternoon, but the Hunter will again be bigger (though remaining locations will be much smaller). However conditions are expected to be a lot cleaner as winds become light and variable tending offshore under a weak right of high pressure.

The rest of the week looks nice and clean with light winds and weak afternoon sea breezes. 

Thursday will see a further decline in wave heights, but Friday is on target for a great pulse of longer period S/SE swell, generated by a trailing polar low attached to the current sequence. The models aren’t picking it up very well but I reckon we’ll see occasional 3-5ft sets at south facing beaches and 6ft+ bombs at exposed bombies and other south swell magnets like the Hunter. Of course, anywhere not completely exposed to the south will be a lot smaller. 

Conditions should be super clean with morning varibale winds though the afternoon sea breeze may take the sheen off exposed spots.

This weekend (July 25 - 26)

A developing coastal trough over the weekend will freshen NE winds about most coasts though it won’t affect every location. In particular, locations south of the Illawarra may see light and variable winds Saturday, and southerlies on Sunday - but other coasts are certainly at risk of developing onshore wind. 

These winds will be associated with some small local windswell on Saturday and potentially the early stages of a more significant E/NE swell associated with another Tasman Low or ECL early in the following week. At this stage it’s too early to pin down size estimates from this source, I’ll have a better idea on Wednesday.

However, there’ll also be some sideband S/SE swell on offer, from the tail end of the trailing polar low responsible for Friday’s pulse. Size will be down quite a bit from Friday but reliable south swell magnets may pick up intermittent 2-3ft sets Saturday, smaller on Sunday. It’s a low confidence event though, and not worth planning around.

Next week (July 27 onwards)

The weekend’s developing trough-cum-Tasman-Low looks like providing large E/NE tending E’ly swell for the start of next week. The models are moving around on the size/timing but at this stage we could be looking at a couple of days in the 6-8ft range, albeit windy in parts. 

Let’s take a closer look on Wednesday.