South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Monday 3rd November)

Best Days: Tues: strong but easing south swell across Northern NSW - aim for the early morning for the best winds (don't expect much north of Byron). Wed: small mix of swells with a brief window of good winds early (again, don't expect much north of Byron). 

Recap: Quite a mixed bag in recent days. Strengthening N/NE winds built a local windswell across the Northern NSW coast on Saturday, whilst a S’ly change improved conditions and added a secondary short range swell on Sunday. However, surf size remained very small in SE Qld. A new S’ly groundswell has built across the coast today but - in similarity to last week’s south swell - it’s not showing up everywhere, and even some of the wave buoys (I’m looking at you, Crowdy Head!) are not detecting as much energy as would be expected (especially seeing that this south swell came in bigger than expected in southern NSW). We’ve also see a small short range E/SE swell across SE Qld today in response to a strengthening ridge through the southern Coral Sea. However it’s not showing much quality, especially with a dominant SE airstream.

This week (Nov 4-7)

The surf outlook for the rest of the week is fairly simple - from Tuesday onwards wave heights will trend downwards, and conditions will generally deteriorate as the northerly regime redevelops across the coast.

But, for Tuesday's outlook - the pick of the forecast period, by any stretch - there’s actually some difficulty right from the outset, as it’s hard to estimate just how much size we’ll see in the water early morning.

Based on current surfcam observations and erratic buoy data, I’d usually be tempted to pull back on Tuesday’s size estimates. However with southern NSW pulling in some really strong sets this afternoon (in the 6ft+ range), and the trend still holding steady, I’m more inclined to hold true to the existing model guidance that suggests 4-6ft waves at exposed south facing beaches across Northern NSW. 

Under this scenario, we'll obviously see smaller surf at beaches not open to the south, and locations north of Byron Bay will also see much less of this southerly swell (perhaps 2ft+ across most of the Gold and Sunshine Coast, being a mix of southerly groundswell and short range E/SE windswell).

Wind wise, we’re looking at freshening nor’easter throughout the day (across Northern NSW) so the early morning will offer the only real opportunities to capitalise on a brief period of light NW winds. Winds are likely to remain moderate easterly across SE Qld all day, so it’s unlikely that we’ll see anything amazing at all on Tuesday north of the border.

Strengthening NE winds on Wednesday will then accompany a steady drop in south swell (early 3ft sets at south facing beaches in Northern NSW, much smaller later), and a small peaky concurrent NE windswell.

An approaching southerly change is expected to reach the southern NSW coast early Thursday morning but current model guidance suggests it won’t influence much further north than about Port Macquarie - and not until the afternoon at the earliest - so NE winds are likely to persist about the Far North Coast and SE Qld region through the rest of the week. 

As for potential swell sources for the second half of the working week - there really aren’t many. The main source will be the local NE fetch off the coast but even that won’t be particularly strong, and any swell it generates will mainly favour the Lower Mid North Coast. So, late Thursday afternoon may have some options south of Port Macquarie (or, at a pinch Coffs Harbour) in the lee of the southerly, but otherwise I wouldn’t hold your breath for anything amazing.

This weekend (Nov 8-9)

Nothing of any great interest at this stage. We’re probably looking at peaky options at exposed beaches around 1-2ft, with freshening northerly winds both days. A developing ridge across the central/northern Tasman Sea mid-late week may supply some energy out of the east but I can’t see much more than a couple of feet. Let’s hope Wednesday’s update improves on this outlook, because right now the weekend looks like being better spent away from the coast.

Long term (Nov 10 onwards)

Looks like we have another succession of reasonable swell generating fronts due through the southern Tasman Sea from Sunday into Monday. This should kick up another couple of days of decent southerly swell for exposed south facing beaches across the Northern NSW coast (Monday to Wednesday). I’ll update this in more detail on Wednesday.