Southeast Queensland and Northern New South Wales Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 30th May)

Best Days: Sat: early waves at south facing beaches in Northern NSW. Sun: peaky combo of east and south swell with good winds early. Mon 9th June thru' Thurs June 12th: looking good for a decent trade swell. Possibly some ECL action around this time too but more likely in southern NSW.

Recap: Small average surf. 

This weekend (May 31 - June 1)

Not a great weekend expected all up, but there will (eventually) be waves to surf.

A small southerly swell is building across the southern NSW coast at the moment, and it’s expected to grace exposed south facing beaches of the Northern NSW coast on Saturday with inconsistent 2-3ft sets (and much smaller surf at beaches not open to the south). Winds are looking a little dicey but should be good early (light and variable), before freshening into the afternoon from the eastern quadrant.

SE Qld won’t see much, if anything from this southerly swell - only exposed south swell magnets will really pick up any energy, and it'll probably be late in the day by which time the onshores will also be up.

This south swell will then ease slowly through Sunday, to be concurrently replaced by a small, long range E’ly swell generated by an unfavourably-aligned low NE of New Zealand earlier this week.

As mentioned on Wednesday, its fetch was primarily aimed up into the Fijian region so the dispersed swell energy we will eventually see at the coast will be much smaller than what we have seen from similarly placed (but more favourably aligned) systems over the last few months. 

The Sunny Coast will pick up the biggest waved from this source (inconsistent 2ft+ sets) and it’ll become progressively smaller as you track south to the Gold Coast and Northern NSW coasts.  Hopefully there’ll be enough residual south swell in the mix to provide some peaky waves at open beaches, however mainly onshore winds (possibly variable early) will keep conditions below average for much of the day. Keep your expectations in the low to moderate range. 

Next week (June 2-6)

There’s nothing much in store for next week. A developing trough along the southern NSW coast this weekend will be located outside of our swell windows, however a high to the east of this trough will direct a moderate ridge across the northern Tasman Sea that’ll provide some small peaky E/SE swell through Monday and Tuesday (say, 2ft exposed beaches). 

The trough off the southern NSW coast will remain slow moving for a few days, and although there’s a chance for a small return south swell off its western flank later next week (Thurs/Fri) we probably won’t see much more than 2-3ft at exposed south swell magnets in Northern NSW. And very little in SE Qld apart from some residual trade swell. 

Longer term (June 7 onwards)

Some models are pointing to a deepening trough in the central/western Tasman Sea late next week and into the weekend that could very well spawn a significant swell generator for parts of the East Coast either next weekend or early in the following week (possibly an ECL too). However current model guidance is more in favour of the southern NSW region than the northern - let’s wait and see how Monday’s model runs evolve this scenario.

Elsewhere, we also need to keep an eye on the area north and north-east of New Zealand that’s been a regular spanning ground for long range east swells over the last few months. There’s nothing of major significance on the charts right now however there is a suggestion we’ll see a slow moving, strengthening high in this region through the second half of next week, through the following weekend and the early part of the adjoining week that could provide some mid-range trade swell (arriving sometime around Monday 9th, reaching a peak around Wednesday 11th or Thursday 12th). More on this in Monday’s update.