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

Best Days: Tues/Wed/Thurs/Fri: lots of fun waves at most open beaches with a pulsey E'ly swell and generally good winds. Sat/Sun/Mon: small E'ly swell at most beaches, plus a strong S'ly swell at exposed south facing beaches in Northern NSW.

Recap: Large, unruly E’ly swell on Saturday with winds tending NW in the north, gradually filtering southwards along with a very slow improvement in surf. Offshore winds then prevailed Sunday with clean conditions. Surf size peaked about 8ft+ Saturday morning (following a near record breaking maximum wave height overnight Friday at the Tweed buoy, of about 13m), easing to 6ft Sunday and then 3-4ft this morning with continuing offshores.

Next week (May 5 - 8)

So, wasn’t that exciting? The weekend forecast generally played out as expected, except the swell peaked earlier than Friday’s revised forecast notes suggested, and Saturday's NW breeze that developed across SE Qld was only light so conditions were actually quite reasonable at those protected locations (mainly Noosa) that were holding the size.

The good news is that we’ve got plenty of swell on the way for this week, although things have been rejigged since Friday’s forecast was issued.

The main difference is that a small tropical disturbance expected to develop near New Caledonia Tuesday and Wednesday - within an enhanced trade flow - has been re-routed in the last few model runs. This was expected to generate a solid E’ly swell for the end of the week, but instead we’ve got more small to medium sized E’ly swell due mid week. 

Now, although the trough and low responsible for the weekend’s surf has dissipated, there’s still a healthy infeed of NE winds stretching back into the South Pacific around a large high pressure system over New Zealand’s North Island. The latest models have strengthened this fetch and it’ll continue to be a source of great waves through the middle of the week. 

In fact, as this fetch is almost stationary, we should see a very slow increase in size through Tuesday and into Wednesday, mainly due to a slow increase in the swell period. Tuesday should maintain 2-3ft+ surf across most open beaches, with a slight increase throughout the afternoon and into Wednesday with 3-4ft+ waves likely at exposed beaches.

Note: if anything, locations further north (i.e. SE Qld) may not see quite the same amount of size as most Northern NSW coasts as the fetch is aimed a little better towards points further south. 

Conditions are looking great both days with light variable winds early Tuesday tending N/NW and freshening, ahead of a W/NW flow for Wednesday. So this will favour the open beaches quite nicely.

This east swell should hold into Thursday morning but is likely to ease throughout the day and then into Friday. A front crossing the south-eastern corner of the  country on Wednesday is likely to push a ridge into SE Qld for Thursday and we may see winds veering southerly during the day (following an early SW’er) however this probably won’t affect many locations. Either way no new swell is expected in the wake of this wind change.

Through Thursday afternoon and Friday, the easing E’ly swell will be replaced with a slightly smaller long range E’ly swell from a strong trade flow sitting north and north-east of New Zealand. This should maintain plenty of waves at the beach breaks to finish the working week - somewhere in the 2ft to almost 3ft range - with generally light winds and sea breezes in most areas.

We may also see a small pulse of S’ly swell at exposed south swell magnets in Northern NSW on Thursday, originating from a very strong front exiting eastern Bass Strait, but not much size is expected from this source owing to a poor fetch alignment (maybe a few stray 2ft sets).

The only other swell worth mentioning for the rest of the week is another possible south swell arriving across the Mid North Coast late Friday, extending from a vigorous frontal passage across Tasmanian longitudes through Wednesday and Thursday. This is expected to be the precursor to a lengthy pattern of south swells for the region for the weekend and early next week, and at this stage Friday’s late increase will probably be confined to locations south of Port Macquarie. However we may very well see 4-5ft sets at south facing beaches on dark. I’ll fine tune this estimate on Wednesday. 

This weekend (May 9 - 10)

There should still be plenty of small, long range easterly swell over the weekend, originating from our mid-week trade belt north and north-east of New Zealand. However the main focus (but unfortunately not for surfers not in SE Qld) will be our southern swell window.

What’s most impressive this developing pattern is that all of the associated fronts will be working in conjunction with a large, stationary polar low sitting directly south of the Tasman Sea, but off the ice shelf. So this means that the swell window - albeit our most acute southerly window - will remain active for five or six consecutive days.

Late Friday’s strong southerly swell will push up into remaining Northern NSW coasts into Saturday, but will also be overrun by strong secondary over the weekend - a new long range pulse on Saturday (with peak swell periods near 18 seconds), followed by a second mid-range pulse on Sunday. South facing beaches should holding the 4-5ft range however these sustained long period groundswells often produce wave heights far above this at selected swell magnets and offshore bombies. Again, I’ll fine tune the specifics on this on Wednesday.

However, these swells rarely favour SE Qld - so keep your expectations low from this source (i.e. no bigger than the previous E'ly swell, unless you've got a particularly good south swell magnet up your sleeve). Wave heights will also be smaller at beaches not completely open to the south, but with a mix of refracted south and long range east swell - and favourably light W’ly winds both days - there should be great waves at most beaches this weekend. 

Next week (May 11 onwards)

More south swell! The frontal progression across Tasmania looks like it’ll continue through the weekend which means more strong southerly energy for the first half of next week, but once again - only for exposed south facing beaches in Northern NSW. In fact this run of south swell should continue right through the middle of the week at least.

For those of you that keep an eye on our distant east swell window, a tropical depression looks set to deepen into a sub-tropical low way out south of Tahiti during the middle of this week, and if it comes off as modelled we could be looking at some serious 30-40kt E/SE winds aimed towards us (see chart below) - but I think this low is located too far away, and is expected to to remain in our swell window for too brief a time, to be of any great benefit. We may possibly see some tiny long range lines next Tuesday or Wednesday (early model runs have 13-14 second swell periods) but I doubt it’ll result in much more than a foot or two of extremely inconsistent surf at exposed beaches. 

Otherwise, its worth pointing out that - aside from the system mentioned above - our east swell window will shut down from the weekend onwards, which means SE Qld could be looking at a return to very small conditions through the middle to latter part of next week. That is in the absence of anything developing weather system locally, of course - however the strong frontal progression expected during this time typically results in little swell activity from the tropics, or northern Tasman Sea. 

So, if you only have access to SE Qld beaches I’d certainly make the most of the coming week of waves, as the following week is looking a little grim. More on all of this on Wednesday.