South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 28th November)

Best Days: Saturday: Northern NSW: early light winds and a new building south swell at south facing beaches. SE Qld: peaky E/SE swell with early light winds, holding thru' Sunday. 

Recap: Small, low quality swells at most locations with average conditions.

This weekend (Nov 29-30)

No major changes to the weekend forecast, just a slight downgrade in the size department across SE Qld.

We’re looking at a peaky E/SE swell in the 2-3ft range both days however the upper end of this size range will be mainly found across open Sunny Coast beaches, with slightly smaller surf on the Gold Coast, and then smaller again with increasing southerly latitude.

Early light winds will tend moderate E/SE during the day so surf early for the best waves. 

On the Northern NSW coast, this otherwise small and uninspiring E/SE swell will be overshadowed by a stronger but very inconsistent S/SE swell that’s pushing up the southern NSW coast this afternoon.

Set waves will be very inconsistent but south swell magnets should pick up a few 2-3ft+ sets throughout Saturday. Early light variable winds will freshen from the NE during the day, so get in shortly after dawn for the best conditions (the swell will hang all day though, so protected northern corners should have options through the afternoon). Easing swells are then expected through Sunday. 

Next week (Dec 1st-5th)

First up: we’ve got another week of northerly winds ahead, so make sure you’re well prepared with a high volume board and a bucket of grommet-esque enthusiasm.

As for surf prospects, a deep low traversing the Southern Ocean yesterday has generated a small, long period south swell that’s due to push into the Northern NSW coast overnight Sunday, ahead of a second, better pulse of swell on Monday. Again, this swell will only favour exposed south facing beaches in Northern NSW (we won’t see anything in SE Qld) and set waves will be extremely inconsistent, perhaps 2-3ft+ if we’re lucky but the long breaks may be off-putting. This swell will then ease slowly through Tuesday.

Otherwise, the only other sources of swell for the week will be a small and uninteresting NE windswell (only benefiting the Mid North Coast) and some small, average trade swell from a stationary ridge south of New Caledonia. At this stage wave heights should hover in and around the 2ft mark, and there should be  a few brief windows of opportunity across SE Qld as local winds will be lighter here than in Northern NSW, owing to a weaker pressure gradient. With some luck we’ll see a few early hours of N/NW winds too.

Elsewhere, a complex trough off the southern NSW coast early next week is proving to be quite an erratic system to forecast so the outlook for this swell window during the middle of next week has low confidence. Most model guidance hasn’t shown much interest in the possibility of a noteworthy swell generating system (as I mentioned in Wednesday’s notes) so I’m keeping my expectations very low for a notable swell event now. However we’ll revise this on Monday as major changes can’t be ruled out for this time period just yet.

Into the longer term period, there are a few systems popping up in the longer term model runs but right now - with such a flukey, low quality outlook for earlier in the week - there’s no point speculating about anything beyond this. Suffice to say that there’s a lot of potential for good surf in the longer term; we’ll just need to wait a few more days to firm up the specifics. More on this on Monday.