Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast (Mon 4th Nov)

Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Monday 4th November)
Apologies for the computer model forecast downtime, we're battling some gremlins in the system but hope to have it back ASAP

This week (Nov 4-8)

The first pulse of southerly swell has filled in across the Southern NSW coast today but conditions have been poor with associated strong S'ly winds. Protected locations are the best but small to tiny due to the acute nature of the S'ly swell.

The cold outbreak responsible for today's initial pulse of S'ly swell has develop a low pressure centre east of Tasmania. Around this low a fetch of S'ly gales will be generated and projected north through the Tasman Sea during today and tomorrow. This should generated another pulse of S/SE groundswell for later tomorrow afternoon before peaking overnight and easing through Wednesday.

Size wise, we should see south facing beaches in Sydney holding around the 6ft range all day tomorrow, with bigger bomb sets on the Hunter and at swell magnets. A drop in size is then due Wednesday from 4-5ft at south facing locations and 3-4ft at open beaches. This is a bit down on Friday's forecast due to the fetch not being as favourably aligned for our coast.

Conditions tomorrow will still be less than perfect with an early S/SW wind that will shift SE into the afternoon. Wednesday is still looking the best with a light morning offshore W/NW'ly ahead of E/NE sea breezes.

Thursday will continue to see fun levels of SE swell easing from 2-3ft+ across open beaches with morning offshore NW winds.

Friday will see a mix of E/SE swell and NE windswell to 2ft at open beaches with lumpy conditions early under a light variable breeze before the NE'er kicks in again.

Longer term (Nov 9 onwards)

Initially Friday's NE windswell will ease through Saturday only to be replaced by a building SE windswell as a surface trough deepens off the coast (pictured right). This trough is forecast to form into a low pressure system early next week while drifting south through the Tasman Sea and this should see winds swing offshore with fun levels of E/SE and NE swell. We'll look at this in more detail on Wednesday though.