North Narrabeen Surf Season
Sydney, NSW, Australia · part of the North Narrabeen spot guide
Autumn is the season. From March the first East Coast Lows and Tasman lows send east-to-south-east swell while westerly winds groom the banks; April is the historic contest month, and May and June are the stormiest window of the year, when the largest waves on the New South Wales coast arrive. July still runs on south groundswell with cold offshores, and August and September taper. Late summer has its own engine — Coral Sea cyclones in February and March throw north-east swell straight onto the Alley’s favourite angle — while the rest of summer is small north-east windswell, afternoon sea breezes and holiday crowds.
Water runs from about 17.5°C in August to 23°C in February: a 3/2 fullsuit in winter, a springsuit or boardshorts from January to March. Winter days often start calm or offshore under westerly frontal cycles; in summer the north-east sea breeze fills in around eleven, so surf early.
Where the swell comes from
Four engines feed the bank. East Coast Lows forming in the Tasman close to the coast are the big-wave source, most frequent in autumn and winter, with storm periods of 12 to 15 seconds. Tasman Sea lows under a cradling high send south-to-south-east groundswell of 12 to 15 seconds, and Southern Ocean lows south of Tasmania add long-period south swell of 15 seconds and more. Coral Sea tropical cyclones in February and March deliver the north-east swell the lefts love, and summer nor’-easters add short-period windswell.
Historic swells at North Narrabeen
The Narrabeen Classic finals
On 20 April 2021 the swell swung from south to east overnight and small closeouts turned into overhead runners under the faintest offshore breeze — clean three-to-four-foot surf on the finals day of the first world-tour event here in over twenty years. Gabriel Medina beat Conner Coffin 18.77 to 14.10 and Caroline Marks beat Tatiana Weston-Webb.
The June 2016 East Coast Low
From 3 to 7 June 2016 the Sydney waverider buoy peaked at 6.53 m significant height with a 12 m maximum wave, 13.5-second period from an unusual east-south-east direction — coinciding with a king tide. It was an erosion event, not a surf day: Narrabeen profiles lost up to three-quarters of their beach volume and more than a kilometre of seawall was damaged.
The Pasha Bulker storm
The 8–9 June 2007 East Coast Low pushed the Sydney buoy to 6.4–6.9 m significant height and a 14.1 m maximum — then the Sydney record — while grounding a bulk carrier on Newcastle’s Nobbys Beach. Still the largest New South Wales storm by total wave power on record.
The Anzac Day low
The 20–22 April 2015 East Coast Low set the Sydney buoy’s record maximum wave of 14.9 m and cut Narrabeen Beach back by around 25 metres — the second-largest storm in the buoy’s history.