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Forecast issued: Monday, February 08, 2010
Sydney South Coast NSW ADVERTISEMENT Forecast issued 2.00pm Monday, 8 February 2010. By Ben Macartney Short Forecast Tuesday ENE swell 3ft+ exposed open beaches, gradually easing. WIND: Early light winds tending ENE 10 - 15 knots. Wednesday: E swell 2 – 3ft exposed beaches, inconsistent in the upper range. WIND: Early light NW to NE tending NE 10 – 20 knots. Thursday E swell 2ft exposed open beaches. WIND: Early light NW to NE tending NE 15 – 20 knots. Friday ENE swell 1 – 2ft exposed beaches. WIND: Early light NNW to NNE tending variable SE to NE later 5 – 15 knots. Saturday SSE windswell 2ft south facing beaches. WIND: Early light and variable tending SSE 15 – 20 knots. Sunday: S swell 2ft south facing beaches, potentially increasing to 2 – 3ft. WIND: Early light N/NW tending NE 10 - 20 knots. Recap A relentless run of E swell continued to pump across the entire East Coast over the weekend. Wave heights held steady around three to five feet across Sydney and the South Coast, while hanging in at slightly higher levels across the Far North Coast – generally four to five feet grading a foot or so smaller across south-eastern Queensland. Wave heights dropped a notch overnight, still hanging in around three to four feet across exposed Sydney beaches on Monday morning under light to moderate ENE winds. Forecast Overview A steady weakening of the high pressure ridge spanning the Tasman sets up a gradual easing trend over the coming days. The swell will still hold at eminently rideable levels into the middle of the week, so it’s definitely worth getting amongst the tail end of this episode before it dries up altogether into Thursday/ Friday. The slow moving ridge continued to direct a long 20 to 25 knot ENE fetch at the southern half of the NSW coast over the weekend, sustaining low to mid range ENE swell across the region through the first half of the week. ENE swell holds around the three foot mark on Tuesday ENE swell continues to range either side of three feet on Tuesday and getting in early sees the best of it. Early light winds prevail ahead of moderate E/NE winds developing mid morning, causing surface conditions to deteriorate during the afternoon; Source BOM; A slow moving high over the Tasman sees lighter winds prevailing across the NSW coast on Tuesday morning. Slightly smaller again by Wednesday, going Thursday, gone by Friday A further drop in size sees ENE swell still hovering around two to a less consistent three feet across exposed coasts. Again it’s worth making the most of early light N/NW winds before north-easterlies increase to ten to fifteen knots and the swell further abates into the afternoon. By Thursday morning it’s back to two foot or so and by Friday it’s just about all over; one to two feet max and mixing in with low levels of short range NE windswell into the afternoon. The Sydney Virtual Buoyirtual Buoy; ENE swell is on a gradual easing trend all week. At this point there’s very little to look forward to this weekend. Various models pick up a small frontal low traversing out of Tasmania’s swell shadow on Friday, briefly aiming a moderate S fetch at the southern half of the NSW coast; Source Metervice. GFS picks up renewed frontal activity across our S swell window into the end of the week leading in a minor increase in S swell this weekend. For the time being this prospective swell source doesn’t appear likely to generate more than two feet plus of SSE windswell across the most exposed south facing beaches on Saturday. There are similarly low chances for a small pulse of mid period S swell moving in across Sydney and the South Coast on Sunday/ Monday. The prospective swell source is a larger extratropical low traversing the Southern Ocean, deep beneath Victoria and Tasmania on Thursday/ Friday. Again, this is a tenuous prospect that may or may not amount to anything; Although GFS leans towards a small pulse of S swell moving in on Sunday and Monday at slightly stronger periods of ten to twelve seconds, the EC indicates this system will be too weak to generate any new swell of note. This will be reviewed again on Wednesday. Long range Beyond that, the fringes of some recent model runs pick up a weak area of low pressure developing off the NSW coast as a high pressure ridge builds across the southern Tasman on Monday 15 Feb. If this proves accurate we could be looking at a rising trend in S/SE swell into the middle of next week. For now this is still highly speculative and revisions are likely over the coming days.