South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Saturday 13th June 6am)

Best Days: Sat/Sun/Mon: plenty of east swell for SE Qld but winds will confine the best waves to semi-exposed points. Sun/Tues: fun small S'ly swell in Northern NSW with light winds. Tues: good S/SE swell for Northern NSW with mainly light winds. 

Recap: Thursday and Friday’s south swell came in smaller than expected across the entire NSW coast. However, conditions were generally average across Northern NSW anyway due to the local gusty SE airstream across many regions. A small trade swell in SE Qld and Far Northern NSW on Thursday built into Friday, slightly above forecast expectations across the Sunshine Coast but generally close to the mark elsewhere. However fresh SE winds created difficult conditions away from the protected points.

*Sorry for the delayed forecast - I've been on the road all week with limited forecast time. Regular programming will resume next week*

This weekend (June 13 - 14)

A strong ridge across the Coral Sea will maintain fresh SE winds across the SE Qld and Far Northern NSW coast down to about Ballina on Saturday. Local observations (as of 5am) have a pocket of lighter S/SW winds in Coolangatta right now but this won’t last too long as the overall synoptic flow is quite robust. 

The swell models still have a very strong east swell progged for Saturday however as per Wednesday’s evaluation, I believe that it’s overcooking these heights, by combining two swell trains into one - a short range trade swell off the Coral Sea ridge, and a distant E’ly groundswell from a depression that formed NE of New Zealand earlier in the week. 

This is further qualified by a quick look at the forecast numbers: our Sunshine Coast datapoint has two swells for most of Saturday - 2.7m @ 8.5 seconds from the E/SE, and a S’ly swell of 1.1m @ 10.8 seconds. However, the E/SE swell’s period is too short to be attributable to the local trade swell off the Coral Sea ridge, and although the period is close to what would be expected for the South Pacific depression, there’s no way we could be seeing 2.7m of swell after four days of wave decay.

In any case, there should be two swell trains from this direction but the wave model doesn’t seem to be resolving it very well. This is a common model aberration that we see when there are consecutive swells from a similar direction (we have no control over thus unfortunately).

Also, the latest data form the Mooloolaba wave buoy shows significant wave heights of around 2.1m, which confirms that the swell model has either majorly over-forecast the size of one swell, or - more likely - there’s a short range E/SE swell in the 2m range (with Cape Moreton recording E/SE winds averaging 30kts for the last couple of days, this is very plausible). So, I’m quite convince that the model is combining the two swells.

That being said, there has been a slight upgrade of the strength of the Coral Sea ridge, and as such we’re looking at bigger waves on Saturday. The models have 4-5ft for the Sunshine Coast and 3-4ft for the Gold Coast but in combining wave heights I think we can probably shave a foot off these heights. So Saturday should see about 3-4ft north of Brisbane, about 3ft south of Brisbane, and 2-3ft south of the border (with decreasing size with increasing southerly latitude). You’ll just need to tuck into a sheltered location to score the best waves. Expect marginally smaller waves and similar but slightly easing winds into Sunday.

Along the Northern NSW coast we’ll see very little of this trade swell but a new S’ly groundswell is scheduled to arrive on Saturday afternoon, generated by a strong front that tracked south of Tasmania on Thursday. It’s expected to reach the Mid North Coast around early-mid afternoon, but may not reach the Far North Coast until overnight (so, Sunday will see this swell better north of Coffs or Yamba). 

Exposed south facing beaches should pick up 3ft+ sets from this source and by Sunday we’ll be looking at variable winds and reasonable conditions across most of the open beaches. Expect smaller surf at locations not completely open to the south.

Next week (June 15 onwards)

The weekend’s trade swell will continue to ease slowly through the first half of next week but there should still be plenty of energy for the SE Qld and Far Northern NSW regions. Winds will be much lighter by this point so conditions should be reasonably good. 

The weekend’s south swell will also be easing on Monday and light variable winds are expected here under the influence of a Tasman high. 

On Tuesday, we're looking to see a a new pulse of long-period S/SE swell across Northern NSW, originating from an intense polar low forming well south of New Zealand Friday afternoon. Model guidance has marginally eased surface wind strengths, which has slightly pulled back size estimates and also the arrival time of the new swell - we’re likely to see a building trend across the Mid North Coast during the morning but it may be delayed across the Far North Coast until the afternoon. As such, my confidence has decreased a little on this swell event as there is a risk that the best waves may occur under the cover of darkness Tuesday night (at least in the north anyway). 

South facing beaches should pick up inconsistent but well defined 3-4ft sets from this source, with smaller waves elsewhere. I’m not expecting much of this swell to make its way north of Cape Byron (away from the swell magnets, it’ll probably be the same size, if not smaller than the pre-existing trade swell).

In any case, winds are expected to be generally light for most of Tuesday ahead of a late freshening NE trend that’ll persist into Wednesday. So for the most part conditions should be pretty good. I’ll firm up these details on Monday because our impending mid-week system has the potential to speed up the developing onshores late Tuesday, which would be a spoiled for the Far North Coast.

Wednesday is then looking like a general write-off with freshening NE winds as a broad trough develops along the coast and eventually spins off into a Tasman Low of some description into Thursday. Beyond this there is some wild speculation about how this low will develop, however with considerable divergence across the models we’ll have to wait and see how the output pans out next week. At this early stage most of this low is likely to favour southern NSW, so we’d probably see a fun infeed of E/NE swell across SE Qld and Northern NSW later next week and into the weekend. Let’s take a closer look Monday.