Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast (Mon 23rd Dec)

Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Monday 23rd December)

Best Days: Wednesday morning, Saturday afternoon, Sunday morning

Recap

A small north-east windswell eased through Saturday under freshening S'ly winds, but this kicked up an afternoon increase in windswell.

Sunday morning saw fun waves across the coast coming in at 2ft+ across south facing beaches from the S/SE under light NW winds. These freshened from the N/NE during the day though as the swell faded and some small NE windswell developed.

A peak in NE windswell has been seen this morning to 2-3ft across north-east facing beaches but conditions were less than ideal with lingering N'ly winds. Winds should swing NW during the late morning ahead of a shallow SE change as the NE swell drops.

This week (Dec 24 - 27)

This afternoon's change will be linked to a stronger change tomorrow, with a pulse of S'ly swell to 3ft expected across south facing beaches, peaking during the middle of the day. Unfortunately conditions will be poor with fresh S/SE winds, that will ease and swing SE during the day.

The swell will ease rapidly into Christmas Day due to the cold outbreak weakening tomorrow afternoon, with south facing beaches expected to ease from 2ft. Conditions will be much better though during the early morning with a light N/NW'ly ahead of fresh NE sea breezes.

The rest of the week will see small levels of E/NE swell building across open beaches as a weak surface trough sitting off Seal Rocks aims a fetch of weak E/NE winds into us. At this stage the size doesn't look to top 1-2ft into the end of the week with winds varying from the N'th each morning around to a fresh NE'ly during the day.

This weekend (Dec 28 – 29)

The weak trough generating the E/NE swell during the end of this week will become part of a broader northerly ridge over the weekend kicking up larger levels of NE windswell. A peak is expected on Sunday morning ahead of a strong S'ly change (pictured right) which will kick up medium levels of S'ly swell late Sunday and early Monday.

Longer term, we'll probably see the S'ly swell ease into the middle of next week, with some small NE windswell expected to develop again. We'll review this again on Wednesday.