Sydney Hunter Illawarra Surf Forecast by Steve Shearer (issued Fri Dec 27th)

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Small S/SE swells Sat, easing during the day with S winds tending light E’ly
• Not much for Sun with light winds
• Very quiet end to 2024 with small, weak windswells and light winds
• Small flush of short range S swell Thurs, easing Fri
• Nothing much for 1st week of 2025, possible tradeswell into the second week of 2025, check back Mon for latest updates

Recap

Fun leftovers yesterday morning from the S-S/SE to 3ft, bigger 3-4ft at swell magnets. Morning conditions were clean under W-NW breezes. N’lies kicked right up in the a’noon and whipped up 2-3ft of NE windswell which is with us this morning. Light winds this morning are seeing clean conditions with winds shifting N’ly before a late S’ly change arrived around dark. 

Workable NE windswells on offer this morning

This weekend (Dec28-29)

No great change to the weekend f/cast. The trough which brings a S’ly change tonight has a brief proximate fetch of strong S-S/SE winds o/night which whips up some local S-SE windswell for Sat. No great size or quality involved with 2-3ft of short period surf under a lingering S’ly flow which tends to light E-E/NE breezes in the a’noon. Expect what little surf there is to be easing through the a’noon into the close of play. 

Light winds for Sun under a weak, troughy environment with a weak high cell moving off the South Coast during the day. Light land breezes should tend variable with a light/mod SE-E/SE flow in the a’noon. Small, weak surf to 1-2ft tops (more like 1-1.5ft) will offer a wave for kids and beginners. 

Next week (Dec30 onwards)

Huey will be not be attending the last days of 2024. The outlook is very, very low energy with weak high pressure moving into the Tasman and no swells of any significance in the near or far swell windows. We’ll see light winds Mon and Tues, tending to the NE by Mon a’noon as high pressure moves NE. 

Dribbly little windswells in the 1ft range Mon and Tues. Best case scenario NYE is some minor NE windswell but it’s hard to see even a 2ft wave at this stage.

Same again for New Years Day. A developing N-NE flow into a weak trough may generate some small NE windswell in the a’noon.

A small flush of short range S-S/SE swell is on the cards for Thurs as the trough pushes northwards. Again, minor short period stuff in the 2-3ft range. And easing quickly into Fri under current modelling. Keep expectations pegged very low for this one.

We may start to see a trade flow develop into the end of next week, and into the second week of Jan but the high pressure belt still looks unconvincing. Elongated and weak. GFS has a more optimistic scenario which would see some small peaky tradeswell develop in the sub-tropics through next weekend and into the week beginning 6/1. Small E/NE swells would slowly filter down from this source into more temperate areas, along with some small NE windswell,  during that week if the trade fetch becomes persistent. 

Nothing concrete at this stage but we’ll see how it looks when we come back Mon.

Seeya then and have a great weekend!