We’ve got some fun waves on tap for the weekend. The current east swell is a little different from many ‘groundswell’ events, in that we’re seeing a gradual increase in size and period (today’s a little bigger than yesterday, and tomorrow should hopefully be a smidge bigger than today).
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Looking good for the rest of the week. A new east swell is expected to slowly build across the coast duringThursday, generated by a tidy low pressure system located mid-way between New Zealand and Samoa over the last few days.
We’ve got a fairly linear surf forecast ahead for the next few days. Essentially, the trade swell that peaked over the weekend is expected to slowly ease from Tuesday through Wednesday and into Thursday morning.
There’s only one major surf focus for the weekend and that’s a building trade swell that’ll peak in size later Saturday or early Sunday, although the overall trend will be slow so there should be much of a difference either side.
Tradeswell is the main focus of the weekend, which is good because it’ll offer a wide range of surf possibilities across SE Qld.
The reason this is worth noting is that the storm force SE fetch mentioned above lies across and to the south-east of this possible ‘giant ice floe’, meaning that the resulting swell generated by this SE fetch would probably become heavily attenuated by it.
Southeast Queensland and Northern New South Wales Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 9th May)
Best Days: Sat: decent S/SE swell in Northern NSW with good winds across the Mid North Coast (probably OK early morning in the Far North, and also in SE Qld - but it'll be much smaller north of the border). Sun: steadily easing swell with good winds in most regions.
Right now we’re seeing an increase in mainly short range S’ly swell, but some mid-range energy has already reached the Mid North Coast and will fill in across remaining regions overnight, generated by a strong fetch that entered the southern Tasman Sea yesterday.
Wednesday’s building swell will be generated by a strong front presently crossing the Tasmanian coast. It’s a strong, dynamic system but is poorly aligned for the Australian East Coast (quite SW-NE in orientation through the lower Tasman Sea) so swell prospects will be down a bit compared to a more meridionally aligned fetch.
Now, model derived forecasts are an inexact science at the best of times. So if I were positioned somewhere between Port Mac and say, Yamba, about mid-afternoon on Sunday, I don’t think it’d be unreasonable to glance an expectant eye across the coast in hope of some early forerunners.