The summer-like weather is continuing for Sydneysiders for the best part of the weekend but before you dive straight into the ocean to cool off, be prepared for some icy ocean temperatures! Saturday will bring another great beach day with 27 degrees for the coast and a balmy 31 degrees in the west. There’s a slight chance of afternoon storms in the west but beaches should remain dry. But while it’s simmering outside, the ocean may feel like an ice bucket as sea surface temperatures take a dive over the next few days! You’ll need a wetsuit to swim at Bateman’s Bay on the NSW South Coast where the ocean temperature has already dropped from 19 degrees to a chilly 14.9 degrees this week! And the cooling is starting to show in Sydney’s waters which are sitting at 19.4 degress right now and falling. Note that Sydney’s ocean temperature is taken offshore so it’s probably even colder than that.
Why is the ocean so chilly? The cold ocean temperatures are a result of “upwelling.” Basically we’re seeing a consistent stream on north-easterly winds along the Sydney and South Coast which actually work to drag the surface water away from the coast. When this water gets dragged away something has to replace it, so the colder bottom ocean waters rise to the top resulting in a rapid cooling of sea surface temperatures on our coastline. Next week we’ll get southerly winds coming in which should allow sea surface temperatures to warm up again.
Sunday will start off well in Sydney with a high of 25-27 degrees before widespread rain and possible storms develop in the afternoon. Try and make the most of the sunny skies until then as once the rain rolls in on Sunday it will persist right through into next week.
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