South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 12th September)

Best Days: No great days. Late Tues/early Wed for a small south swell at exposed beaches in Northern NSW. 

Recap: Small clean leftover NE swell early Thursday, fading quickly during the day. Not much around today. 

This weekend (Sep 13-14)

Not much on offer this weekend. A building ridge across the southern Coral Sea won’t have enough breadth or strength to whip up much more than a weak 1-2ft for exposed beaches during Saturday afternoon or early Sunday across SE Qld beaches. The position of the fetch means that it won’t influence anywhere south of about Ballina either. Winds will be mainly onshore but the early morning (both days) should offer a couple of hours of light offshores.

In Northern NSW, a small south swell will make its way up the coast on Saturday, really only showing at exposed south swell magnets with low quality sets in the 1-2ft range. Smaller surf is expected through Sunday. Again, aim for the early mornings for the cleanest conditions and keep your expectations pegged quite low. 

Next week (Sep 15-19)

Bit of an average week ahead for the East Coast.

We’re looking at tiny residual surf from a couple of weak sources on Monday and early Tuesday (slow waves between 1ft and maybe 2ft at open beaches) ahead of a fresh pulse of S/SE swell across the Northern NSW coast later Tuesday and into Wednesday morning, generated by a small but tight low rounding the Tasmanian corner over the weekend before pushing up into the southern Tasman Sea. 

However the latest model guidance has wound the strength of the low back a notch and kept it marginally further south than previous guidance, which leads me to knock a little more size off Wednesday’s predictions.

We should see some inconsistent 2-3ft sets at south facing beaches late Tuesday (smaller elsewhere due to the swell direction) and winds will be up from the N/NE by this time so you'll have to tuck into a sheltered northern corner. Wednesday morning may be a better choice with light NW winds expected for the early session. 

Unfortunately, this swell won’t be very well aligned for SE Qld so we’re looking at very small residual trade swell across the region through this time frame.

Elsewhere, there are no major swell sources on the cards for next week. We may see a few windows of minor NE windswell (early Wed, and then early Thurs) thanks to a mid-week trough pushing off the NSW coast, but no significant size is expected.

Longer term (Sep 20 onwards)

I’ve got my eye on an unusual little cut off low modelled to develop well south of the Tasman Sea mid-next week, and track unusually N/NE into the south-eastern corner of the Tasman Sea. Assuming there’ll be some changes in the model output, this system could very well develop into a significant SE swell producer for the East Coast later next week or (more likely) next weekend (although, with much smaller results in SE Qld if it eventuates). More on this in Monday’s update.