Sydney Hunter Illawarra Surf Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Friday August 2nd)

Best Days: Today, tomorrow morning, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday morning

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Moderate to large sized mix of SE and E/SE swells tomorrow, easing slowly Sun and further early next week
• Light W/NW tending NE winds tomorrow, W/SW tending weak E/SE-SE Sun
• W/NW tending variable winds Mon
• Fresher W/SW tending S winds Tue

Recap

Wednesday’s oversized pulse of SE groundswell still offered large 10-12ft+ bombs yesterday morning, easing during the day and then back off from 8ft this morning. Conditions were lumpy and semi-clean during the mornings, wind affected into the afternoons.

This weekend and next week (Aug 3 - 9)

These notes will be brief today as Steve covers the Olympic surfing event.

Now that the significant and quite unprecedented low in the Tasman Sea has started to break down (gallery), we can expect the swell size and energy to continue easing into the weekend.

We’ll see some reinforcing, mid-period E/SE energy from tomorrow through early next week as well, thanks to lingering E/SE winds off New Zealand’s North Island from yesterday through today, weakening slowly tomorrow.

This should result in a mix of S/SE-SE and E/SE swell energy to 5-6ft tomorrow across most open beaches, easing back from 3-5ft on Sunday and then 3-4ft Monday, 2ft to occasionally 3ft Tuesday.

Local winds look great tomorrow morning with a light W/NW offshore ahead of NE sea breezes, then W/SW tending variable E/SE-SE winds on Sunday.

W/NW tending variable winds should be seen Monday, then fresher W/SW tending S’th Tuesday.

Swell wise there’s nothing to really talk about at all thanks to a zonal pattern setting up across the south of the country. More on this Monday and in the meantime get into the existing energy. Have a great weekend!