Central QLD Forecaster Notes by Steve Shearer (updated on Mon Feb 10th)

This week and next week (Feb10-Feb21)

Central QLD: Really fun waves all week as tropical low drifts south

Plenty of fun waves today and all week.

Looking really fun out there

The Northern Australian Monsoon (NAM) remains in full swing with tropical lows strung along the trough line from the Indian Ocean off the Kimberley Coast into the Coral Sea. High pressure at summer latitudes, south of Tasmania, is interacting with a stalled trough off the South Coast and then expected to anchor low pressure drifting down from the Coral Sea. This low intensifies as it tracks slowly through the South Pacific slot between New Caledonia and the North Island, spraying the East coast with quality E swell.

Surf-wise this week looks straightforwards. There’s already a wide swathe of E’ly to SE’ly winds across the Coral Sea and a developing low off the Central QLD coast tracking towards New Caledonia. That will increase windspeeds along the northern flank of a very broad trade-wind fetch smack bang in our eastern swell window. 

Plenty of waves as tropical low drifts through Coral Sea

We should start to see a steady but slow upwards trend today through Tues into Wed with a nice consistent swell consisting of a swathe of swell periods, typical of our proper trade swells. In other words, lots of waves. 

As the low drifts south we’ll see surf get less consistent through Fri and  into the weekend with only wide open E swell spots seeing sets over the weekend.

We’ll see how that looks on Wed.