South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 19th December)

Best Days: No great days overall. Tues/Wed have the most potential but it won't be especially big.

Recap: Very small residual swells through Thursday with mainly N’ly winds. A new E’ly groundswell arrived overnight, and was biggest in the south (3ft+ sets) with smaller surf as you head north. Early NW winds created clean conditions but a southerly change advancing along the coast has confined the only afternoon options (on the Mid North Coast) to southern corners as the east swell diminishes and a small southerly swell builds in the wake of the change. The change just reached Byron and should be into SE Qld in the coming hours.

This weekend (Dec 20th - 21st)

No changes expected for the weekend outlook - it’s a pretty grim situation. 

A moderate ridge building across the southern Qld coast tonight will generate a small short range SE swell for the Gold, Sunshine and Far Northern NSW coasts through Saturday and early Sunday. There probably won’t be enough size for anything worthwhile at the semi-exposed points, so you’ll have to aim for an early session at the beaches while winds are lightest (keep your expectations low).

In Northern NSW, south facing beaches will have a small pulse of reinforcing south swell to play with on Saturday, but the emphasis is on ‘small’. Local winds will be a little more favourable here (i.e. longer duration of lighter winds in the morning). Otherwise, a small residual east swell should pad out most open beaches with a foot or maybe two of inconsistent, low quality surf both Saturday and Sunday.

Next week (Dec 22nd onwards)

Hmmm. A slight downgrade on the optimism expressed in Wednesday’s notes - we’ve still got a few sources of swell but nothing in any way dynamic.

Firstly, as mentioned on Monday we’ve got a broad trade belt developing north and north-east of New Zealand from this weekend onwards, signalling a return to small to moderate, long-lasting distant E’ly swell for the foreseeable future.

This energy should start to appear during Tuesday - maybe not until the middle of the day - and should be worthy of intermittent 2ft+ waves at most open beaches through the afternoon and Wednesday. There maybe a few bigger waves as we push through the back half of the week but let’s see how the fetch develops early next week before getting too excited. 

Elsewhere, model guidance is still suggesting we’ll see a modest SE fetch off the West Coast of New Zealand’s North Island - holding through to the southern Coral Sea - that should supply some small SE swell through the middle of next week too - probably around the same time as the first sign of trade wind swell (mentioned above). Again, set waves in the 2ft+ range are likely at most open beaches across all coasts.

The one positive factor of this additional swell is that - in conjunction with the trade swell - it should ensure a little more consistency than a lone long range energy source.

Otherwise, there's really nothing of any major note in the long term models. Have a great weekend - see you Monday!