South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Wednesday 22nd July)

Best Days: Tues: good, but easing S’ly swell across Northern NSW. All week: fun pulsey trade swell across SE Qld and Far Northern NSW. 

Recap: A strong southerly swell dominated the weekend across the region, although wave heights remained very small north of the border due to the swell direction. Winds were also mainly fresh from the southern quadrant, which limited the best waves to points and other protected locations. Wave heights are now easing across the region. 

This week (July 21 - 24)

The current south swell is easing across the region and will continue downwards into Tuesday. South facing beaches will continue to see the most size, with early 3-4ft+ sets at south facing beaches in Northern NSW, and much smaller surf elsewhere, and SE Qld won’t see much size from this source at all. 

Expect wave heights to abate slowly throughout the day and further into Wednesday - this particular event will probably be all gone by Wednesday afternoon. Conditions should be reasonably good just about everywhere though with a light variable flow (we may see a trailing sou'east airstream in the Far North on Tuesday, but winds should be SW early morning). Light variable winds are expected Wednesday.

Otherwise for Northern NSW, a small long period south swell is due across the coast on Wednesday but the large travel distance and the poor fetch orientation within our swell window will probably restrict sets to an extremely inconsistent 1-2ft at south swell magnets throughout Wednesday and maybe early Thursday. Don't hold your breath though.

Across SE Qld for the week, and although Tuesday's easing south swell won't provide much size here, we’ll continue to see a small peaky trade swell thanks to a firm ridge through the Coral Sea.

In fact, the good news is that even though the Coral Sea ridge will relax over the coming days, a broad high across the Tasman Sea will freshen easterly winds through our mid-range eastern swell window for quite a few days (see chart below). As such, we’re looking at a small pulsey short range east swell for the entire week, generally in the 2-3ft+ range across the Sunny Coast with slightly smaller surf across the Gold Coast and Far Northern NSW coast (down to about Byron or Ballina). 

As for the local winds in SE Qld, there's no real strength expected within the synoptic pattern, so we should see light variable winds each day - but there is a risk that we’ll see onshores crop up occasionally (however they shouldn’t do too much damage if they do).

For what it's worth, we’ll see the local wind direction swing anti-clockwise from the south-east to the east then north-east, and the swell direction will also probably trend in a similar direction as well.

One area to keep an eye on in Wednesday’s notes is a small trough modelled to strengthen off the SE Qld on Thursday, along with an infeed of E/NE winds. It’s a little hard to have confidence in right now but sometimes these small, slow moving systems can generate brief pulses of surf over and above the residual swell energy. If this occurs it’d be either late Thursday or early Friday for a shot of short range E’ly swell (and possibly a round of dicey winds), but I’ll revise this in Wednesday’s update.

This weekend (July 25 - 26)

Nothing major expected for the weekend. At this stage the easterly fetch through the Northern Tasman Sea looks like it’ll persist through into late Thursday or Friday, which means we should see the small easterly regime continue into Saturday, ahead of an easing trend into Sunday. 

However this doesn’t take into account the ramifications of the small possible swell source immediately off the SE Qld region later Thursday and Friday. If this produces any swell, it’s probable that it wouldn’t last particularly long but I’ll feel much more comfortable estimates wave heights with the availability of Wednesday’s model guidance. 

However, with our southern swell window expected to be devoid of activity to finish the week, there’s no south swell the cards so this east swell will be the focus of the coming forecast notes. 

As for local conditions - Saturday looks fun with a light variable wind across most region but Sunday is at risk of a freshening northerly as a vigorous cold front approaches from the west. But, let’s take a closer look on Wednesday.

Next week (July 27 - 28)

A series of strong fronts and deep low pressure systems are expected push through our south swell window from Sunday, which should set up a sustained period of strong southerly swell from about Monday onwards (mainly favouring Northern NSW). More on this in Wednesday’s notes.