Central QLD Forecaster Notes by Steve Shearer (updated on Fri 9th Feb)

This weekend and next week (Feb10 -Feb16)

Central QLD: Surf pattern continues through next week

Lots of fun waves this week, more to come.

Plenty of fun waves now and into the future

We’ve got a very strong high pressure belt at the moment with a cell in the Tasman (twin cells actually, straddling New Zealand) and monster high moving in from the Bight. A trough off the NSW coast is focussing SE winds along the Eastern Seaboard, with a strong front/low traversing the Lower Tasman. A tropical low near New Caledonia is anchoring a trade-flow in the Coral Sea.

Lots of fun surf continuing with a small dip in size expected Sat from an easing in tradewinds today.

The E’ly-SE’ly fetch gets reinforced later Sat by a new high pressure ridge squeezing up against a tropical low hovering NW of New Caledonia so we should see surf start to build again through Sun, again, tidally affected by the big new moon tidal amplitudes.

No great change to next week’s outlook. The tropical low near New Caledonia remains, although unlikely to deepen further into a tropical cyclone at this stage of the game. The rebuilding trade fetch hold plenty of fun sized surf through Mon until at least Thurs.

There is a bit of model divergence later next week with ECMWF suggesting a deepening trough anchoring the E’ly fetch in the Northern Tasman  with a bit more swell potential for temperate NSW and easing surf in the sub-tropics, while GFS holds a more stock standard Coral Sea based tradewind fetch favouring Northern parts of the state. Either way we’ll continue to see E’ly quadrant swells over this period.

There’s still some chance of cyclogenesis in the South Pacific next week although latest model runs now favour the Samoan region, with a SE track and not much direct surf potential for the East Coast. That could change so we’ll track it over the weekend and see how it looks on Mon.

Seeya then and have a great weekend!