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

Best Days: Thurs/Fri: interesting, flukey long period south groundswell with light winds.

Recap: We’ve seen fun waves over the last few days with intermittent pulsey SE energy around the 3ft mark, though there have been long breaks between the bigger sets. Wave heights are now slowly starting to ease. Light morning winds preceded afternoon sea breezes both days. 

This weekend (Nov 28 - 29)

The weekend outlook is pretty complex. But ultimately, we're unlikely to see any great waves.

Swell wise, we've got a combination of swells for Saturday, including small fading SE swell from today, a minor S’ly swell from a front that passed below Tasmania on Thursday, and also some local NE windswell from a developing N’ly fetch off the Mid North Coast this afternoon.

The latter swell source - the N’ly fetch - will be a by-product of a slow moving Tasman high and an approaching trough from the south. As the trough moves into the South Coast (on Saturday), we’ll see local winds ease and become light and variable, though model guidance suggests they’ll maintain strength north of Sydney and possibly even as far south as Wollongong (though, prospects for better conditions increase as you head south from Sydney). 

The N’ly fetch won’t be ideally angled for Southern NSW, and as it retreats to a position off the Mid North Coast through Saturday, the Hunter curve will also partially shadow its swell energy. This will restrict surf size to 1-2ft at most open beaches (both days) though one or two reliable NE swell magnets may rake in slightly bigger sets in the 2-3ft range. 

Otherwise, expect inconsistent 1-2ft sets from the south and south-east on Saturday, with slightly bigger sets in the Hunter from the south swell, around 2-3ft (keep your expectations very low).

A gale force S’ly change on the backside of the trough will push across the South Coast mid-afternoon on Sunday. Winds are likely to veer gusty NW ahead of the change on Sunday morning (which probably won’t do much for the leftover NE windswell), however the late timing of the change - into Sydney around 4-6pm - will probably be too close to dusk to generate an appreciable kick in new south swell. Though it will trend upwards rapidly as soon as the change goes through (worth keeping in mind if it ends up running ahead of schedule).

Next week (Nov 30 onwards)

A brief flush of punchy south swell is expected on Monday, sourced from a tight low attached to Sunday’s late change. Overnight buoy readings will likely be quite high, but by first light Monday will be on the downwards trend - so at this stage 3-4ft+ sets are likely at south facing beaches (bigger across the Hunter) with much smaller surf elsewhere, thanks to the low period and acute southerly swell direction. 

Surf size will probably halve by the afternoon, and conditions should be pretty good with light variable winds and sea breezes. There’s an outside risk for a lingering S’ly breeze north from Sydney across the Hunter, and most exposed beaches will have some leftover wobble courtesy of the overnight southerly flow, but it’ll be improving quickly. 

A temporary low point in swell is expected Tuesday morning, with freshening N/NE winds through the day building bumpy local windswells to 2-3ft+ by late afternoon. This will precede a gusty southerly change overnight Tuesday, however it’s expected to clear quickly to the north-east so winds will rapidly ease through Wednesday - though early morning will certainly be quite gusty.

Initially, Wednesday will see building local windswells from the local fetch (lumpy 4ft south facing beaches by the afternoon) however this change will be attached to an incredible Southern Ocean low (see below) that’s expected to ‘bomb’ south of Tasmania on Tuesday (a bombing low is one where the central pressure drops by more than 24hPa in 24 hours). As a result, we’re looking at an impressive southerly swell filling in overnight Wednesday into Thursday and Friday.

The models aren’t resolving this swell very well, perhaps because the low is not expected to be ideally aimed within our swell window - for the record, our surf model is estimating about 3ft from this event.

However, with core winds around the low’s slow moving centre expected to be upwards of 50kts, peak swell periods should reach 18-20 seconds, and this should greatly exaggerate surf size at offshore bombies and other reliable south swell magnets. Of course, beaches not open to the south will be much smaller. 

Ballpark size right now is in the 6ft+ range at the swell magnets, but I’ll fine tune the specifics on Monday’s update - small tweaks in the position and/or alignment of the low could dramatically increase (or decrease) projected wave heights. Early indications are for light winds too, so it’s shaping up to be a quality southerly swell event - though the flukey nature of the swell source (an intense though partially shadowed, poorly aligned low) and the long swell periods means there’ll be a wide variety in wave height response from beach to beach (read: some locations will do very well, other spots will dip out).

Have a good weekend, see you Monday!