Central QLD Forecaster Notes by Steve Shearer (updated on Fri 28th July)

This weekend and next week (July28-Aug 4 )

Central QLD: Easing surf over the weekend, great outlook for next week

Swell hanging in there, now slowly easing and dropping further over the weekend.

Easing but still some quality waves about

Not much change to the weekend f/cast. A trough and cold front are being rapidly shunted southwards by a blocking high which is moving NE into the sub-tropical Tasman and weakening with the tradewind flow in the Coral Sea also easing. The current swell sources are slowly drying up leaving us with small background swells for the weekend. Should be just rideable at exposed breaks, becoming tiny through Sun into Mon.

A large high sets up a very useful tradewind flow across the Central and Southern Coral Sea next week, generating a very handy tradewind swell for the sub-tropics through from Wed next week and into the weekend. As the fetch matures and we get a fully developed sea state we can expect plenty of punchy E’ly tradewind swell likely to build into the 2-3ft range Thurs and possibly reach 3-4ft Fri and into  the weekend. Winds will be basically SE-E through this period.

Another large high moving in at similar latitudes into next weekend suggests a similar pattern of small SE-E/NE swell into the medium term, as the ridge rebuilds and re-strengthens the tradewind flow in the Coral Sea. Quite an unexpected treat for early August where we would be normally battening down the hatches for strong W’ly winds.

That’s a long way off though so let’s see how it’s shaping up Mon.

In the meantime, have a great weekend!