Sydney Hunter Illawarra Surf Forecast by Steve Shearer (issued Fri Sep 13th)

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Light winds Sat AM small swells, fresh NE seabreezes ahead of fresh S'ly change
• Strong S swells Sun strong S’ly winds easing and tending S/SE in the a’noon
• Still sizey Mon with morning offshore winds
• Mix of S swells likely next week- potentially some good long period S'ly groundswell Tues/Wed with mostly offshore winds and a’noon seabreezes
• Smaller S pulses from mid next week with good winds likely
• Potentially more S swell medium term, possibly sizey

Recap

S winds and S swells made for a scrappy day yesterday but size did build into the 3-4ft range on a building trend. Around 4ft of S swell this morning, with lump and bump on it from o/night S’lies. There are some waves around if you aren’t too fussy about wave quality and winds are predicted to moderate through the day as swells ease. 

This weekend (Sep14-15)

No great change to the weekend f/cast. We have a follow-up front and trough expected to push into the Tasman later Sat, this time backed by a monster high (1042 hPa) in the Bight. Steep pressure gradients will create near gales to gales in a proximate S’ly fetch and whip up plenty of sizey S swell. Expect a quiet start to Sat until this system pushes through, with small S-S/SE swell leftovers to 2 occ. 3ft and offshore winds from the W-W/NW with mod/fresh NE seabreezes ahead of a fresh S/SW-S change in the evening (into the Illawarra around 7pm). Any increase in new S swell now looks to come after dark but there is a (very) small chance we could see a very late kick if the system evolves ahead of schedule.

Sunday will be sizey with a slingshot fetch of S/SW-S near-gales up the coast o/night whipping up large local S swells to 4-5ft, likely building into the 6 to occ. 8ft range at S exposed breaks during the day. With a strong wind warning on the cards it’ll be sheltered or semi-sheltered spots only and these will be significantly smaller. Wild and windy day with some surf for the keen.

Next week (Sep16 onwards)

 Plenty of size to start next week, which will see more S swell pulses. Mon should see sizey 5-6ft S swells, bigger on the Hunter with another frontal system pushing into the Tasman. We should see a morning W-W/SW flow before winds tend SW-S and freshen. Mon morning looks good.

More S swells from the frontal progression Tues and Wed. Tues should see another aggressive increase in size to 5-6ft at S exposed breaks with offshore winds in the morning tending to a’noon seabreezes. The bulk of the energy will be mid period S, but there will be will some longer period swell trains in amongst it.

Size eases back Wed with sets to 3-4ft, just a notch more long period energy with favourable offshore winds most of the day as a front pushes right up over NSW.

More fronts pushing into the Tasman for the second half of next week, will supply small/mod pulses of S swell right through next week and into the weekend. There’s some model divergence so we’ll take a conservative outlook but there are reasonable odds we’ll see these swells over perform as the succeeding fetches operate on an already active sea state. 

No let-up in S swells as we move into next weekend and and the following week beginning 23/9.

The southern swell window looks very active through the short and medium term.

Check back Mon and we’ll update with fresh info.

Until then, have a great weekend!