South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 21st November)

Best Days: Sat AM: Mid North Coast looking really good under an early SW breeze. Mid-late next week: outside chance for some good waves as a ridge builds across the coast (see notes below).

Recap: Nuthin’ but northerlies for these past few days. Some local windswell in the mix but very ordinary conditions overall.

This weekend (Nov 22-23)

Let’s divide the region into two for the weekend. South of Coffs Harbour, and north Coffs Harbour.

To the north: there’s nothing but northerly pain expected this weekend. We’ll continue to see a peaky mix of low period north-east and east swells but local winds will really make things difficult.

But to the south: we’ve had an improvement from Wednesday’s notes, with the aforementioned southerly change now expected to nose a little further north along the coast.

It’s due into Seal Rocks just after midnight tonight, Port Mac just before dawn and Coffs Harbour shortly after dawn (although, winds will be strongest in the south with not much strength on the Banana Coast).

In fact winds should actually tend more SW in direction across the coastal strip early morning, which is even better for Saturday's surf prospects.

This should provide clean conditions across southern corners that should be picking up the short range NE swell quite well (being further downstream, it’ll coincidentally see the most size with 3-4ft sets at swell magnets early on, ahead of an easing trend during the day).

As for Sunday, we’ll be back to the freshening northerly regime just about everywhere with poor surfing opportunities at all but the most protected northern corners. There won’t be any south swell behind Saturday’s (weak) change either so the dominant swell train will be NE windswell.

Next week (Nov 24 onwards)

A continuation of this troughypattern on Monday will maintain gusty northerly winds about most coasts and limited surfing opportunities.

On Tuesday, a reasonably punchy front will push along the Southern NSW coast, but it’s expected to stall somewhere along the Northern NSW Coast in the evening.

Obviously, the position of this stall is crucial to regional surf prospects, because locations to the north will remain under a brisk northerly flow - possibly until the weekend (hello SE Qld!) if we're really unlucky - but locations to the south will see freshening SE winds as a ridge builds across the central coastal region. 

And a convergence zone between these regions could see light winds, or at least something funky and model-defying (which is probably where the best surf will occur mid-week). I’m currently tipping this to be around Coffs Harbour on Wednesday, with a slow movement northwards towards the Gold Coast by Thursday or maybe Friday.

So mid-week surf prospects will consist of small NE windswell across most regions, with a small southerly swell for Northern NSW’s south facing beaches on Wednesday and Thursday (thanks to the parent low related to late Tuesday's southerly change). 

Later in the week, we’re looking at a potentially reasonable short range SE swell off the strengthening coastal ridge.  If you really want me to go out on a limb, I reckon there’s a chance for a window of opportunity around Thursday or Friday just north of the ridge - where winds will be light, or possibly even offshore - but where we’ll also see a building short range SE swell ahead pushing ahead of the surface wind change itself. This will only occur if the ridge advances very slowly forwards (which is not common), allowing the swell to outrun the fetch that's generating it. But hey: we all need something to cling on to in these desperate times. So let’s see how the model data is stacking up on Monday.