South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Wednesday 20th August)

Best Days: Fri/Sat/Sun: building swells in SE Qld, best suited ot the points. Mon onwards: solid period of E'ly swell - possibly large at times - but probably windy.

Recap: Lots of swell from the south across exposed beaches in Northern NSW, but windy. SE Qld has fared much worse than expected today, with hardly any of this south swell penetrating beyond exposed south facing beaches.

This week (Aug 19-22)

Bit of a mixed bag for the next few days but there’ll be waves. Right now the predominant south swell is expected to hold overnight before an easing trend sets in from early Thursday morning. As the pressure gradient relaxes across the southern NSW and Mid North coasts, wind speeds will slowly ease in strength but there’ll be a lot of residual bump on the surface so expected open beaches to remain wobbly for some time yet (in the absence of a true offshore, that is). 

In fact, a developing ridge across the Qld coast will maintain moderate to fresh SE winds across the SE Qld and Far Northern NSW coasts for the rest of the week - the lighter winds will really only be noticeable south of about Ballina or perhaps Yamba (with a brief period of early offshores, unlikely to be enough to greatly improve conditions).

Surf wise, we can expect early 4-5ft sets at exposed south facing beaches in Northern NSW on Thursday, with wave heights drying up from the south through the morning and into the afternoon. Expect smaller surf at beaches not open to the south.

In SE Qld, I’m really not pinning my hope on much size across the semi-exposed points on Thursday (based on today’s observations) however as the ridge builds, the easing southerly swell will be replaced by a building short range SE swell that should slowly start to provide rideable options. Let’s cap our expectations in and around the 2ft mark by Thursday afternoon at these spots (with bigger but greatly wind affected surf at exposed beaches north of the border).

On Friday, we’ll see the arrival of a new pulse of SE groundswell, originating from a developing secondary fetch in the southern Tasman Sea at the moment. This should maintain 3-5ft surf at exposed beaches in Northern NSW, however with a similar wind regime as per Thursday, only the Mid North Coast is likely to see favourable conditions (the points further north may have small runners though.. but you’ll need to seek out some protection from the regional SE airstream).

In SE Qld, this SE groundswell will lose a lot of size as it pushes north of Cape Byron so we’re looking at a mix of this energy plus Thursday’s building short range swell (which is expected to bolster a little more as the ridge strengthens further). The combined effects of these swells should kick up some 3ft sets across the semi-exposed Gold and Sunshine Coast points throughout the day, which’ll be your only option under a fresh sou’easter - however it should be pretty fun. It’ll be bigger at exposed beaches but quality will be at a minimum.

This weekend (Aug 23-24)

Looking pretty good for SE Qld this weekend, with a broadening E/SE fetch across the Northern Tasman Sea expected to build plenty of surf across the region - the models have strengthened the outlook since Monday, so subsequently the surf forecast has been revised upwards. There’ll also be some small S’ly and SE swell in the mix but the E/SE fetch in the Northern Tasman is by far the dominant source.

The only downer are the local winds. We’re looking at a fresh and gusty SE thru’ (at a pinch) E/SE airstream and this will render all locations very ordinary bar the protected points. Still, with 4-5ft of E/SE swell on the Goldy and some bigger sets possible on the open Sunny Coast beaches (smaller on all of the points, obviously), there’ll be no shortage of size. 

On Northern NSW, wave heights will slowly taper off with increasing distance from the border. However there’s still likely to be 3-4ft of surf in the Mid North Coast: the main problem with be the overall onshore airstream. It’ll be lighter and probably even variable for a period in the morning south of Yamba but on the whole this will keep a lid on wave quality. Still, it’s nice to have an active weekend of waves ahead. 

Longer term (Aug 25 onwards)

The long term looks really interesting, albeit quite unseasonal. A large high in the southern Tasman Sea is expected to remain slow moving, whilst a broad area of low pressure across the southern Coral Sea and Far SW Pacific squeezes a broad easterly fetch across the northern half of the Tasman Sea.

There’s even a suggestion that we may see the development of an easterly dip that - if it develops - could retrograde towards the East Coast, with any likely swell aimed primarily towards the Northern NSW and Southern Qld coasts. This could have the potential to supercharge the ocean state and deliver some sizeable surf to the region.

At the moment the models are suggesting this will take place early next week (our surf forecast model picking 8ft on the Goldy on Monday! But with howling onshores). We still need a few more days for everything to come together so let’s take a close look on Friday. But in short - next week looks like seeing an extended period of sizeable east swell right across the coast.