South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Wednesday 4th March)

Best Days: Fri: building south swell with OK winds (only small in SE Qld). Sat/Sun: pulsey, then easing south swell with good winds early (only small in SE Qld). Next week: slowly building trade swell, best suited to SE Qld.

Recap: Small mix of SE swells on Tuesday, becoming weaker today with the swell direction tending more E’ly. Mainly light winds both days.

This week (Mar 5-6)

We’ve had a slight upgrade (gasp!) in the latest model data, which - if local winds play ball - has the potential to produce some good waves around parts of the Northern NSW coast to finish off the working week.

A vigorous front will cross Bass Straight tonight, entering the south-west Tasman Sea early Thursday before it powers through to the north-east. This process is a little faster than Monday’s model runs suggested; we’ll probably see the front nose into Coffs Harbour by mid-late afternoon Thursday, reaching the border around dinnertime. 

For the most part Thursday looks rather ordinary with freshening N’ly winds and a small residual east swell similar to today (occ 2ft sets at open beaches). Winds should veer NW during the day so conditions should be OK (mainly in northern corners), but there simply won’t be much size on offer. Southern locations will see a late windy increase in short range southerly windswell.

The fetch trailing Thursday’s late change now looks like it’ll cover a slightly broader area of the Tasman Sea than Monday’s models indicated, and it’ll also maintain strength through our immediate south swell window (i.e. throughout Thursday). What this means is that we’re looking at slightly bigger waves from this source - mainly at south facing beaches in Northern NSW - however the acute southerly swell direction really won’t favour most of SE Qld at all.

As such, south of Byron Bay we’re looking at solid 3-5ft sets at south facing beaches on Friday, with smaller waves with decreasing southerly exposure. A weak ridge will linger about SE Qld coast during the day (which may steer the winds to the SE at exposed coasts, mainly on the Sunshine Coast) but elsewhere we should see light variable winds and sea breezes. 

North of Byron though, SE Qld won’t pick up anywhere near as much swell due to the swell direction. Most open beaches will probably hold in at the 1-2ft range, with the region's handful of reliable south swell magnets picking up occasional 3ft+ sets. This will consist of a mix of S'ly groundswell and small, short range SE swell originating from the local ridge.

As a side note (and relevant due to the WSL’s presence on the Goldy this week), where does Snapper Rocks fit in amongst things? 

The Coolangatta stretch is quite tricky as it actually has one of the widest ranges of exposure on offer. D’Bah is an 80-90% south swell magnet (relative to Northern NSW), however under south swell events, we almost always see surf size quickly taper off from Snapper Rocks through to Rainbow Bay. Often there’ll be 3ft sets from behind the rock but it usually trims back to 0.5-1ft into Greenmount. 

So at the competition site on Friday, I think we’ll be somewhere between the previous two estimates for SE Qld - Snapper Rocks itself is very unlikely to see 3ft+ sets, but on the right tide it’ll probably pick up inconsistent 2ft to almost 3ft waves if we're lucky (note: the swell is expected to peak around early afternoon, so expect smaller surf at dawn). 

The surf will also react differently to the southerly direction though, compared to what we’ve seen out of the east (in recent weeks) - once it pushes through Little Marley, surf size will taper off very quickly. South swells often push just a little wide of the bank too. 

So overall there should be some fun, just-contestable waves on offer on Friday. And conditions should be good for much of the day with early light SW winds tending moderate SE throughout the middle of the day.

This weekend (Mar 7-8)

There’s been a similarly slight upgrade for the weekend too. 

A strong secondary front (trailing Thursday’s change) has been touted in the models over the last 24 hours, and this is starting to consolidate nicely into the weekend forecast. As such, Friday’s south swell will ease through Saturday but the secondary swell is expected to reach the Mid North Coast early morning, the Far North Coast late morning and then push north of the border into the afternoon. 

Again, the southerly direction will play havoc with wave heights away from south facing beaches - the swell magnets south of Byron Bay should see 3-5ft surf throughout the day but it’ll be much smaller at remaining beaches. SE Qld is likely to see very small surf on Saturday morning (1ft+ at most beaches with bigger 2ft to maybe 3ft sets at south swell magnets) however a few bigger bombs may eventuate - probably exclusively at south swell magnets - through the afternoon with the arrival of this new swell.

As for Sunday: it’s a steady towards trend from the southern quadrant, biggest in the morning, and biggest at south facing beaches (3ft+ south of Byron, much smaller elsewhere). 

And conditions? The weekend looks OK in most regions with a weak pressure gradient on Saturday leading to light variable winds and afternoon sea breezes (NE in the south, E’ly in the north). On Sunday we may see these onshores develop a little earlier as the trades start to take shape in the southern Coral Sea but on the whole it’s looking pretty good, especially for the early session. I’ll fine tune this on Friday.

Next week (Mar 9 onwards)

The long term outlook still remains focused across tropical latitudes. The trades are expected to begin a re-establishing phase across the southern Coral Sea from about Sunday onwards, however no great strength or structure is expected so we’ll probably see the most benefit for the SE Qld region, with a slow increase towards 2-3ft+ at open beaches by mid-week (say, late Tues/Wed), and possibly a little bigger through the second half of the week. Expect smaller surf south of Ballina. 

There are some suggestions for a very significant Tropical Cyclone way out near the Vanuatu/Solomons region early-mid next week but not all of the models are in agreeance with this (and, based on recent model trends, anything of major interest in that region will probably remain towards the ‘back’ of the model run for the next few days.. i.e. continually delaying its arrival).

Nevertheless there are certainly good signs for some strong activity here over the coming weeks. Either way, swell eventuating from such a scenario would probably not arrive until later next week or the weekend at the absolute earliest. So we have a lot of time to assess upcoming model guidance, as there's a lot that needs to come together before we get enthused.

Elsewhere, our near swell window looks like it’ll remain a little flukey beyond the weekend with only small local sources of swell and occasionally some small refracted Southern Ocean groundswell. But I’ll take a look at all of that on Friday.