South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 23rd January)

Best Days: Sat: solid, but easing and improving surf as winds ease and swing SE across Northern NSW and SE Qld (light winds on the Mid North Coast). Sun: smaller waves best suited to open beachies, with light winds and sea breezes. Tues/Wed: fun building SE swell for the semi-exposed points.

Recap: Pretty happy with the size call over the last few days but royally pissed off with what eventuated in the wind department between Wooli and Noosa (south of about Coffs was generally within expectations). Unfortunately, with limited forecast time this week I didn’t really pay enough attention to the small trough over the central Qld coast in Wednesday’s model runs, and it’s ended up heavily influencing the local airstream from Fraser Island down to about Yamba. And the rain! Currently 104mm in the tin at the Seaway (and counting) since 9am, plus another 73mm since 4:30pm yesterday. That’s 177mm of rain in 24 hours… an incredible amount of water in such a short space of time. As such, be very wary of water quality for the next few days.

This weekend (Jan 24 - 25)

It’s hard to make a judgement call on the weekend’s prospective surf outlook because regardless of local winds and swell trends, the current rain activity will also have a reasonable bearing on the surf quality. 

All of this rain has to funnel somewhere, and that somewhere is going to be a combination of rivers, creeks and local stormwater drainpipes, out into the ocean. The downstream effects can therefore influence everything from water temperature, turbidity and pollution (could be fallen tree logs floating in the lineup), as well as create significant short term alterations to the state of local sand bars and gutters. All of which can’t be estimated in a sweeping glance.

Nevertheless, the overarching theme is a steadily easing swell trend all weekend with rapidly improving surface conditions. Wave heights should still manage 3-5ft at some exposed beaches on Saturday morning, mainly from the Gold Coast southwards, with slightly smaller surf along the Sunshine Coast thanks to the primary fetch slipping southwards over its initial development. And wave heights will obviously be smaller at semi-protected and protected points. Expect an easing trend during the day too.

The key surf factors for Saturday are the local winds. The current easterly airstream is expected to ease and slowly swing SE,and in doing so should start to improve conditions along the semi-exposed points of Far Northern NSW and SE Qld. South of about Coffs winds should be light and variable so there shouldn’t be too many problems here. But it may take a half day or so to see a noticeable improvement on the surface between Yamba and the Sunshine Coast, even longer at beaches nearby large rivers.

On Sunday we’ll see wave heights fall away even further, with the open beaches of the North Coast picking up the biggest sets (2-3ft+) and smaller surf north of Byron Bay into SE Qld. However by this time winds should be light and variable in the morning, with afternoon sea breezes. Local banks pending, there should be some reasonable beach breaks around the traps. Expect smaller surf into the afternoon.

Next week (Jan 26 onwards)

In Wednesday’s notes I discussed a possible re-intensification of the low in the central Tasman Sea on Saturday, leading to a potential pulse from the east early Monday - but only south of about Forster to Seal Rocks.

This development looks like it’ll still happen, however it’s hard to have much confidence in just how much size we’ll see - at a rough guesstimate it looks safe for 2-3ft+ sets in this region, but with very little new swell influencing the coast north of about Port Macquarie or Coffs Harbour. 

In any case, Monday’s surf potential looks to hinge around a southerly change that’ll nose into the Mid North Coast early morning, along with a new developing trough in the Central/Northern Tasman Sea. This pattern is expected to anchor a strong SE fetch across the western Tasman Sea for a few days, with a possible retrograde back to the mainland too (exciting!).

As discussed on Wednesday, it’s likely to deliver a period of large, windy and wet conditions to parts of the coast, in fact by the end of next week we could be looking at a seriously large swell event, albeit probably somewhere in southern NSW. 

However prior to these developments, there is good agreement across the models that this pattern will contribute a fun seasonal short range SE swell through Tues/Wed, with nice waves across the semi-exposed points of SE Qld and Far Northern NSW. Beyond that, there are all kinds of options depending on what unfolds in the Tasman Sea but I’ll detail that with more clarity in Monday’s notes.