South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 22nd August)

Best Days: Sat/Sun: fun waves across the SE Qld points. Mon onwards: large windy waves building towards a mid-week peak.

Recap: Small, average and generally wind affected waves Thursday, improving greatly today with a new SE swell and good winds for the Qld points.

This weekend (Aug 23-24)

Still no changes to be made to the weekend forecast. The broadening E/SE fetch across the Northern Tasman Sea responsible for today’s swell increase is expected to maintain plenty of surf across SE Qld and Far Northern NSW, and with SE winds on hand the semi-protected points will have the best waves.

Our surf model has backed off the size prediction a smidge due to the formation of an easterly dip/trough off the southern Qld coast - a little closer than expected from Wednesday’s model runs - however the upside of having a trough so closes to the coast is that we may see brief, isolated pockets of variable winds at times (don’t get your hopes up for anything amazing though).

Winds should be lighter south of about Yamba but an onshore tendency is still likely during the day across the Mid North Coast so aim for an early session here.

Size wise, much of the Northern NSW coast is looking at a peaky mix of swells in the 3ft range for most of the weekend, with bigger waves from the Far North (from Ballina) up into the Gold and Sunny Coasts, between 3ft and occasionally 5ft at times. It’ll be smaller on the points but they’ll offer the only real surfing opportunities under these conditions.

Next week (Aug 25-29)

Next week is where things really start to heat up. As has been discussed since last Monday, the synoptic outlook has the Tasman High interacting with a broad area of low pressure in the southern Coral Sea from the weekend onwards. Model guidance is now much more confident on the development of the weekend’s easterly dip/trough, and there’s every chance that it could develop into a full-fledged East Coast Low as it migrates southwards down the NSW coast.

Either way, we’re looking at a large E’ly swell building from Monday onwards, peaking up into Wednesday ahead of a slow - but still strong - downwards trend into the end of the week. It’s too early to have confidence in just how much size right now but early indications are that exposed locations in Northern NSW could see 10-12ft sets, with smaller surf (obviously) across protected locations. This will however depend on the positioning and track of the trough/low and will be better understood on Monday. 

Also, the initial stages (at least) of this building swell are likely to be accompanied by south-easterly gales and heavy rain in parts. This will confine the only surfable options to protected locations.

It’s not quite clear how Southern Queensland will fare in the size department either next week; if the trough slips south it’ll push outside of Queensland’s swell window and wave heights will be much smaller than in Northern NSW. But that may be a good thing because most of the Gold and Sunny Coasts can’t handle big swells anyway.

One area to focus on next week will be the expected position of the trough’s axis. The reason being is that locations north of this point will see an outflow from the SW, creating clean conditions. The models are split on where this may be located however it’s worth remembering that this situation is under continual revision as the models hone in on the specifics (and Wednesday really didn’t have this scenario mapped out at all).

So, the take home message is big and windy for much of next week, with a surfing focus towards the more sheltered breaks. I’ll be very interested to see what Monday's updates brings.

Longer term (Aug 30 onwards)

Right now I can’t find any reason not to suggest that the mid-late week E/NE swell won’t hold - even if in a reduced format - through next weekend. The expected slow moving nature of this pattern suggests a long lived swell event that’ll generate waves from south-eastern Tasmania to Fraser Island, and there’s bound to be some excellent surf at some point throughout the longer term period. Tune in on Monday for more details.