Sydney Hunter Illawarra Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Wed 15th March)

Forecast Summary (tl;dr)

• Easing E'ly swell from Thurs, clean with light winds tending offshore
• Small by Fri with a S'ly change pushing up the coast
• Small mix of swells Sat/Sun
• Fun small trade swell building from Mon thru' Wed
• Chance for a solid though windy south swell early-mid next week

Recap

Building swells and light onshore winds Tuesday delivered fun surf as the breeze dropped below 5kts into the afternoon, allowing conditions to clean up nicely. Surf size reached a peak this morning with solid 4-5ft+ sets at most open beaches under a light offshore breeze. This afternoon's sea breeze has remained weak so it's been an all-day affair of quality surf. Hope you got some! 

Eastern Beaches this afternoon

This week (Mar 16 - 17)

No major change to the forecast issued Monday.

We've already reached the peak of the current swell cycle, so it's a downwards trend from here - though we may see a few lingering bombs across some coasts (probably those more in the south) first things Thursday.

As a general rule, we're looking at 3-4ft surf easing to 2-3ft, before bottoming out at 1-2ft on Friday.

Thursday's conditions look nice and clean with light variable winds freshening from the NW into the afternoon as a front skirts the southern part of the state. There's a chance for a brief period of northerly winds though this will probably be confined to a few select spots north from Sydney.

Friday morning will be clean with early westerlies however a fresh S/SE change is expected to reach the South Coast mid-morning and the Sydney region around lunchtime. So, if you're still scrapping around the open beaches at this time, make it early. 

This weekend (Mar 18 - 19)

No major surf is expected this weekend.

Friday's southerly change will briefly exhibit a modest S/SW fetch exiting eastern Bass Strait that should generate some short period south swell for Saturday morning. 

Additionally, a series of poorly aligned but powerful fronts below Tasmania over the coming days will generate equally small levels of sideband southerly energy for Saturday too. I'll be surprised if we see much more than a slow 2ft across Sydney's south facing beaches, with perhaps the odd bigger set at the Hunter magnets. Elsewhere it'll be tiny.

Conditions should be clean with light winds ahead of an afternoon NE seabreeze. 

Sunday's looking very ordinary with moderate N/NE winds and a small mix of low energy swells from the south and E/NE. Keep your expectations low. 

Next week (Mar 20 onwards)

Our NE swell window remains the focus for the coming week. 

A pair of tropical disturbances straddling the Fijian region (see below) are part of an evolving atmospheric dynamic that will concurrently occupy the Coral Sea, Northern Tasman and South Pacific basins over the coming days. 

Right now, a ridge is building to the south of this region, and this will offer some support to the tropical features (irrespective of whether they reach cyclone status). And from a swell generating point of view, this is important as the disturbances themselves are too small in size (and fetch length) to generate any meaningful swell. 

So thanks to the ridge, as a minimum we can expect a half-week of small, useful background trade swell. Nothing major in the size department is expected from this quadrant but we should see surf size building sometime during the day Monday (not at dawn!), let's peg sets ebbing and flowing either side of 2ft for a few days, with long waits for waves at times.

Some of the model guidance is a little more optimistic in the size/duration of this setup, but I think we still need a few more days for them to consolidate before gleaning much more information.

Otherwise, there's a suggestion for a strong southerly change (maybe associated with a Tasman Low) early-mid next week, so we'll have south swell on the make too. But, winds do look tricky through this period. 

All in all, it's a little too far out to be confident in specifics but next week is certainly looking quite dynamic. Which usually means a few windows of opportunity for keen surfers.