South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Wednesday 29th April)

Best Days: Sat: Large peak in E'ly swell with winds eventually swinging offshore across SE Qld (and maybe Far Northern NSW). Sun: strong but slowly easing E'ly swell with a broader coverage of offshore winds. Mon/Tues: leftover E'ly swell with mainly light winds. Wed: new S'ly swell. Next Thurs/Fri/Sat: another strong E'ly groundswell. 

Recap: There’s been no shortage of E’ly groundswell for the last few days (biggest on the Sunny Coast) with a small to moderate southerly swell across south facing beaches in Northern NSW. The south swell is however easing and the east swell will begin abating from tonight. 

This week (Apr 30 - May 1)

The east swell that’s graced our shores for the last few days will trend down through Thursday, and with our recent south swell also easing we’ll be looking towards new sources. 

Fortunately, swell will not be in short supply over the coming days. The big problem we have are local winds, and weather (specifically, rainfall totals). A trough is expected to deepen along the North Coast, eventually spinning up a surface low (probably an East Coast Low) during Friday. As this occurs, easterly winds will strengthen about all coasts - although the Mid North Coast will see a delayed onset of strong winds (and the associated swell increase).

Therefore, there’s not much positive news to glean from the current short term synoptic outlook. The development of this trough and low has been somewhat stalled since Monday’s model runs, suggesting we’ll see a peak in size across most areas on Saturday (with concurrent onshore winds). However, the models often failed to accurately resolve the local wind field across the coastal margin, and there’s currently a few solutions offering microscale features that could result in pockets of favourable winds at various points on Friday. 

Nevertheless, the broad outlook is for a small start on Thursday, ahead of a steady upwards trend from the afternoon through into Friday, whereby we could be looking at stormy 6-8ft surf at exposed beaches between the Sunshine Coast and Yamba by the end of the day. A delay in this trend is likely across locations south of about Yamba but late Friday will still be pretty chunky and horrible regardless (perhaps just a few feet smaller than further north).

I’ll keep an eye on local conditions through Thursday and will update in the comments below if there are any obvious signs of favourable winds through Friday. But if you have to hedge your bets right now, I’d expect surface conditions to be hovering towards the bottom end of the quality scale, unless you have access to a particularly well sheltered point that’s accessible in near-torrential rain.

This weekend (May 2 - 3)

So, as this trough/low slides southwards, conditions will rapidly improve. First on the Sunshine Coast (early Saturday), then the Gold Coast, and so on as we traverse along the Northern NSW Coast. This ‘improvement’ probably won’t happen until sometime Sunday morning across the Mid North Coast. The most likely scenario will be a wind shift from the east to the south, then the southwest (probably within a few hours).

Surf wise, we’re looking at a peak in size broadly around the time the winds swing. This means if you plan on capitalising on the size from this swell, you’ll need to watch the local obs closely as wave heights will trend down steadily thereafter. As per the delayed ‘improvement’ in conditions across the Mid North Coast, this also means that we’ll see larger waves persisting here for longer too (i.e. all weekend).

How big? Exposed spots should see easy 6-8ft+ surf at the height of the swell on Saturday. But I’m not sure how quickly conditions will improve, and what time of day it’ll occur on Saturday (in SE Qld and Far Northern NSW). Sunday looks to be the safest bet overall with winds tending offshore just about everywhere (except the Mid North Coast early morning). However despite the easing trend there should still be a good 4-5ft across the Gold and Sunshine Coasts in the morning. 

By Friday we should have a firmer indication as to the weekend’s trend, including the timing of the wind change (which is really the main point of interest right now). I’ll update these thoughts then.

Next week (May 4 onwards)

Sunday’s swell event will continue a slow easing trend into Monday. Fortunately, a broad fetch trailing out into the South Pacific will ensure plenty of residual E’ly swell for the following days, albeit smaller in size.

In fact, as was suggested in Monday’s notes, we’re looking at restrengthening of the trades (E/SE of New Caledonia) around Tuesday, possibly with an embedded tropical low (that'd supercharge the fetch, on top of an existing active sea state).

If this comes off - and the models have been reasonably consistent for the last few days on this - we should see a bigger pulse of E’ly swell later next week (Thursday/Friday). This could generate anywhere between 4ft and maybe 6ft of quality groundswell for exposed coasts, and the latest model runs have a ridge concurrently building through the Coral Sea, meaning freshening S/SE winds (read: great waves for the points).

Otherwise, the passage of the LWT over south-eastern Australia will create several southerly swell events for exposed south facing beaches in Northern NSW. The first is due around Wednesday, extending from a front exiting eastern Bass Strait on Tuesday, however a more long-lived series of swells are expected later in the week and into next weekend, as broader fronts push south of Tasmania.

Either way next week has a wide range of swells on tap so there should be no shortage of surf to pick and choose from. See you Friday!