Hello Friends,

No real change to the key numbers this morning for Sydney surfers. We still have a weak little SSE wind swell of around 1.5 metres with an average period of close to 8 seconds. As I tapped out the report this morning a little before 0800, the wind was a chop-inducing ENE’r of 10-15 kts. Toss in another round of featureless grey skies, and it’s not much of a picture.

I think you can pretty much write this one off. Although, if you are extra keen, you might want to look at NE corners late this afternoon. The Bureau is calling for the swell to swing more easterly and to push up a touch. But the ENE wind is set to be a feature all day long.

Oh well, what can ya do?

As always, I’ll keep an eye on things and if there’s a significant improvement, the news will appear here!

Go well one and all.

Forecast for Friday until midnight

Winds

East to northeasterly 10 to 20 knots.

Seas

1 to 1.5 metres.

Swell

Southeasterly 1 metre tending easterly 1.5 metres late this evening.

Saturday 15 October

Winds

East to northeasterly 10 to 20 knots tending north to northeasterly around dawn then tending northeast to northwesterly up to 15 knots during the morning.

Seas

Up to 1.5 metres.

Swell

Northeasterly about 1.5 metres.

Hello evening visitors!

Finally have added a new surf spot to the life list – Elouera. PB and I made a jaunt down to the lovely shire to see what was doing. He’s been down there a bit lately so was able to give me the tour. We checked Elouera and the Wall first. Little SE swell of maybe 1.5m at around 8-9 seconds apart was coming in and the wind was light offshore. Plus it was sunny and comparatively mild. Not super crowded either. In fact, you’d have to say it was uncrowded by Sydney standards. Went down to look at Cronulla point, Shark Island and Sandshoes too, but ended up returning to the long waist to chest high lines of Elouera. Later when we got out we talked to a guy who lives just around the corner from the beach who assured us we’d just got very lucky. I’ll take it! Thanks Huey.

A quick look at the charts tonight makes me think that tomorrow will probably smaller again that at close of play today. From the current run of the WAMs, it seems that we’re in for declining conditions across the next couple days, before the possible return of surfable south swell energy sometime late Friday. It’s not too bad an outlook overall with the models suggesting something more or less across the next 7 days in the Sydney region. Hope Huey doesn’t change his mind!

Go well and catchya again tomorrow.

0645: it isn't much, but it's better than yesterday.

Hello Friends,

As the change came through yesterday, the skies cleared and the wind kicked up. It was chilly and onshore by the time the sun was low in the sky. The wind dropped overnight and is now WSW at around 5 knots, but it’s due to swing around to the ESE and get up into the 10-15 kt range. Meanwhile, the swell is puttering along from the SSE at a metre or so on a period of just 7 seconds.

That all means its pretty marginal where Dee Why’s concerned. However, marginal is better than flat any day and there is at least a reason for keen folk on long and buoyant objects to get in the water for a few of the waist high sets flopping over up toward the surf club. My guess is there will be similar options around the other stretches of beach with good south exposure.

While the models are currently unenthusiastic about our near-term surf prospects, there is finally something vaguely interesting out at the far end of the forecasts. Essentially, it looks as though today’s weak little pulse will fade back to near flatness as we hit the weekend, but, if those super computers are correct, we might just get a pulse of reasonably solid south swell (2-3 metres at 10 sec) with the current wind outlook being for somewhere in the ENE-NNE range at 10-15 kts. However, I must hasten to add that this is right at the outer most limits of the forecasts, so at this stage, it definitely goes into the watching brief file rather than the diary.

Speaking of forecasts, you may have noticed that I’ve been including short-form tags describing the current swell conditions with my reports. These turn up in the Tag cloud below. I’m sure some of you have been wondering why I’m bothering. Well, here’s the rationale: I figure that over the course of a year, we’ll have seen pretty much every combination of swell direction, size and period that Sydney gets. The idea is to give you a quick way to check out what I reported on those days tagged with a particular combo of values. All you have to do is click on the relevant tag and it will take you to a page that contains all our tags, down the bottom of which you’ll find links to all the reports for days with those conditions. To check out how it works, here’s what happened when we had conditions that matched the forecast for this coming Monday S-2m-10s (remember to scroll to the bottom of the page for those links). Have fun with it!

Hope you’re in for a particularly good Wednesday one and all.

Tiny, but perfectly formed at Dee Why.

Ocean looks pretty tiny this morning. A good day to be doing other stuff if you want my opinion. Mind you this comes from someone who is currently beset by a plague of flu devils, so you may want to take that into account.

The numbers are not quite as woeful as yesterday, so it could be that at south exposed spots you might be able to pick up something. Average height at sea of the swell off Sydney is around 1.5 metres from the SSE. Average period is about 8 seconds (marginal) but there is some 10 sec component showing in the peak data. And, I see there’s been a little uptick in size down the coast from us, so it could be that the energy levels will increase a little during the day. Certainly a couple of the forecast models are showing that it’ll pick up a couple of feet today. But then it’s set to drop right back to flatness right through the weekend.

Go well!