Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast (Wed 22nd Jan)

Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra Surf Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Wednesday 22nd)

Best Days: Thursday for keen surfers, Friday morning, Sunday for keen surfers

Recap

Yesterday started off poor with a mix of S/SE swell from Monday afternoon to 2ft+ across south facing beaches and new long-range E/NE groundswell that came in at an inconsistent 2ft to occasionally 3ft across open beaches but with moderate onshore winds.

The E/NE groundswell muscled up during the day though and hit full steam into the afternoon, peaking at an inconsistent but strong 3-4ft as winds tended variable creating clean, glassy conditions.

This morning the swell has back to a small 2ft across open beaches with the odd bigger set under freshening S/SE winds creating poor conditions. A junky S'ly windswell should build this afternoon with 3ft sets expected across south facing beaches late in the day.

This week (Jan 23 -24)

Today's fresh S/SE change is linked to a strong mid-latitude low that's moved across Tassie and is aiming a fetch of gale to severe-gale S/SW winds through our southern swell window (pictured right).

This should generate a strong pulse of S'ly groundswell tomorrow that's expected to peak during the middle of the day to 4-5ft across south facing beaches.

Winds will unfortunately be average with a moderate E/SE tending fresh E/NE breeze.

The swell will drop rapidly overnight and further through Friday as a result of the short-lived nature of the low, but winds should be better for south facing locations and from the N/NE tending NE. These fresh NE winds will also kick up an afternoon increase in NE windswell across north-east facing beaches.

This weekend onwards (Jan 25 onwards)

Saturday morning will start of tiny with an easing NE windswell from 1-1.5ft or so at dawn as a strong S'ly change moves through, bringing with it a solid increase in S'ly windswell during the afternoon, reaching 4-5ft across south facing beaches. Conditions will be poor though with a fresh to strong S/SE breeze.

The swell should swing S/SE in direction on Sunday and remain in the medium size range for most of the day owing to the strong trough moving up the coast aiming a fetch of strong to gale-force S/SE winds through our swell window.

Winds will linger from the S/SE tending E/SE though creating average conditions. Monday should see cleaner waves with an easing SE swell and lighter winds.

Heading into the middle to end of next week we should see some fun E/SE and building E/NE swell across the coast generated by a strengthening easterly ridge in the Coral Sea and possible weak tropical cyclone combining together.

We'll review this again on Friday though.