Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 13th November)

Best Days: Sat AM: couple of small leftover NE peaks early, with light winds. Mon: chance for a small peaky NE windswell in the a'noon. Wed: fun south swell, good winds Wed. 

Recap: Freshening NE winds on Thursday built bumpy local windswells as the previous days’ S/SE swells eased back in size. Today saw a peak in the 3ft range at NE facing  beaches, and light to moderate N’ly winds maintained lumpy conditions through the morning, ahead of a mid-afternoon swing in the wind to the W/NW, creating clean conditions across the region for the late session (see pics below). Size is now slowly easing.

Cenny Coast this arvo

Arvo darkness at Manly

Five minutes at Maroubra this afternoon

This weekend (Nov 14 - 15)

Looks like a slow weekend of waves ahead, with no new swells and mainly small, residual energy from today gradually abating. 

The trough responsible for today’s wind change won’t have any trailing strength on its southern and western flanks, so south swell prospects are minimal at best.

The only hope we have is that persistent N’ly winds off Northern NSW today and tonight should maintain small NE swells into Saturday, though we’ll be lucky to see stray 2ft sets early morning, easing to 1-2ft by lunchtime, and becoming smaller into the afternoon, holding into Sunday morning. South facing beaches and the northern Hunter will be even smaller again. 

Sunday afternoon may see small pulse of mid-range E/NE swell from a weak trough in the north-eastern Tasman Sea, but I’m not expecting much surf (as has been the case all week). So keep your expectations very low on Sunday. 

As for conditions, we’ll see clean options both mornings with light variable winds, with afternoon sea breezes (fresh NE on Sunday).

Next week (Nov 16 onwards)

Monday has a chance for delivering a 60% version of today.

Freshening NE winds from late Sunday through Monday should build a small local swell, and an approaching trough - expected to bring a S’ly change overnight - may create a period of light winds through the afternoon. As such, we’ve got potential for some peaky 2ft+ sets for the arvo session. There may be a small underlying E/NE swell in the 1-2ft range too, though with the freshening NE breeze it won't be terribly flash. Don’t get your hopes up.

A series of strong fronts trailing the trough through into the lower Tasman Sea will be poorly aligned but they’ll kick up a couple of days of useful south swell for us. The early session on Tuesday may start off a little undersized, but the afternoon thru' Wednesday should pick up some 3ft+ sets at times (bigger in the Hunter) though beaches not open to the south will be much smaller. 

Tuesday is at risk of S’ly tending SE winds but Wednesday should be very worthwhile with light variable winds and sea breezes. 

The rest of the long term outlook looks uninspiring with a similar pattern of modest coastal troughs generating temporary NE windswells, and then mediocre south swells from the trailing fetches. It’ll be enough to surf but it’s nothing to plan around.

Have a great weekend, see you Monday!