Long boards for the long weekend
South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales Surf Forecast by Guy Dixon (issued Friday 2nd October)
Best Days: Saturday morning, Sunday morning and Tuesday morning.
Recap:
Conditions have been tiny across northern NSW and southeast QLD in the past few days. South facing beaches have been picking up 1ft peelers at best. The mornings have offered clean conditions preceding a light northeasterly breeze which whipped up a few bumps.
It’s a similar story today, not much other than 1ft peaks for the leaners. A light northeasterly breeze has picked up, but not strong enough to be causing too many issues.
This weekend (Saturday 3rd - Sunday 4th):
Throughout yesterday, a weak low pressure trough developed just south of New Caledonia. As a result of the tightening pressure gradient, a small 15-20kt easterly fetch remained fairly stationary for 12-24 hours. The effects of this system will be pretty subtle, but it will all add to mixture of peaky swells for QLD over the long weekend.
Furthermore, a high pressure ridge is strengthening over the eastern seaboard as we speak, steering a moderate southeasterly flow along the QLD coast. The combination of these two factors will provide small increase in swell north of the border. The Gold Coast should build into the 2ft range on Saturday, while the exposed beaches of the Sunshine Coast may increase to the 2-3ft range (with smaller surf at the points).
The same southeasterly flow which is whipping up this swell however will dominate the coast creating a few bumps throughout the day. Winds will be at their lightest and most southerly in the morning, however as the swell builds in the afternoon, the outer points will be offering the cleanest set ups with a bit of protection from the wind. Unfortunately you’ll probably have to trade size for quality at these spots.
Sunday should hold in a similar size with light variable winds early preceding a northeasterly seabreeze.
South of the border, options for long weekend will be limited to south swell magnets as these trade fetches will be situated too far north.
Over the past few days we have been keeping an eye on a pair of strong frontal progressions moving across the southern swell window. Despite being large and fairly strong systems, their alignment is poor so the effects felt along the northern NSW coast will be modest. The remaining NSW swell windows to the north and east remain pretty quiet (with the exception of the aforementioned systems) in the coming week or two, so we will have to rely on southerly energy over the coming long weekend for any chance of a wave.
The initial system has been passing south of Tasmania overnight with core fetches showing up on the satellite of 40-45kts (stronger core fetches were observed earlier in its life cycle but was in the swell shadow of Tasmania). Unfortunately, these core fetches are terribly aligned and as discussed in previous forecast notes, the southerly trailing fetch which once looked to provide us with more energy has pretty much disappeared.
The northern coast of NSW will merely feel side-band energy from this system which will severely moderate swell sizes as we move away from the swell source. Nevertheless, Saturday afternoon is looking to build to the 2ft to very occasionally 3ft range exclusively at exposed south facing beaches, with smaller surf expected early morning before the swell arrives (especially in the Far North). Remaining locations will virtually miss on any significant size, and this swell will slowly ease throughout Sunday.
Light northwesterly breezes are likely each morning preceding a northeasterly seabreeze. Once this seabreeze kicks in, south facing beaches will offer the cleanest options with the most size.
Next week (Monday 5th – Friday 9th):
The second system is still on track to move south of Tasmania late on Friday and into Saturday. In comparison to the previous system, it is much larger with much more intense core winds, however the alignment remains particularly poor. No doubt, westerly core fetches of 60-65kts will create a hell of a disturbance and good sideband energy, but a southerly trailing fetch throughout Saturday morning will provide the bulk of the energy.
As a result, the surf should build throughout Monday to around 2-3ft at exposed south facing beaches in Northern NSW by the afternoon (again, smaller in the morning, especially in the Far North), gradually fading throughout Tuesday afternoon. Very little energy from this swell will be seen at remaining beaches, especially north of the border.
Winds look to be light and variable for a good part of the morning across northern NSW preceding an afternoon northeasterly breeze.
Frontal activity moving across the southern swell window will continue providing small and brief pulses of southerly swell into next week for northern NSW.
A southerly change will move up the coast throughout Wednesday and is looking generate a short range southerly swell peaking on Thursday. Periods will be low so we can expect noisy disorganised conditions, but exposed south facing beaches in Northern NSW have the potential to rise into the 3ft range. This probably won't initially have much effect in SE Qld though.
Otherwise, the only source of east swell looks to be a minor increase in trade energy during the second half of next week, thanks to a strengthening ridge across the Northern Tasman Sea from about Tuesday onwards.
The southerly change expected around Wednesday may also develop a new ridge through the Coral Sea later Thursday and into Friday, so a very optimistic person might be in favour of a slightly bigger, building trade swell for SE Qld and Far Northern NSW from Friday through next weekend - but this is a very long time away. I'll discuss more on Monday.
Comments
Hard to get excited about the lack off swell after getting back from bali.
How's this bomb set at Snapper this morning?
Even some small peelers at The Pass.
And a stunning sunrise at Coffs Harbour.
What were you doing looking at this stuff Ben, when the forecast was northerly slop post mid morning. Dawn patrol AT the beach, not at the keyboard!
How's these peelers at Noosa? Shows that the trade swell is certainly the dominant swell on the Sunny Coast. That wave out the back of Boiling Pot is almost head high. Even a few tiny runners at First Point.
Looks to be a few nice little waves around this morning .
Long boards for the long weekend, hey?
In contrast to the ludicrous crowd at Noosa there was plenty empty beachies close by . not great quality but punchy and enough size for some fun.
Solid sets on the NSW mid north Coast yesterday arvo.......much better than expected.....or predicted!
Uhmm what happened to sunny coast report this morning? It was absolutely pumping up the Nth end.weak and inconsistent! !1to 2 ft,hilarious. How about 2 to 4ft thumping tubes,glassy and consistent with plenty of juice . .......
I watched the Moffs cam for a long time this morning, wasn't anything over 1.5ft, much the same as the Gold Coast (looked almost flat at many beaches). Surfed the Tweed Coast too, was around 2ft. Maybe you were seeing the leftovers of yesterday's south swell? In any case the Mooloolaba buoy is down 20-30% on yesterday's peak.. how big was Sunday?
Yesterday's waves were bigger for sure, or more consistent in the bigger sets.today swell seems almost ENE,apparently was exellent outer points this morn . same size as beachies.many were saying best waves we,ve had for a long while.I mean I wasn,t alone out there plenty others enjoying the action
Solid beachies up the north end, a few sand enema's, gutsy tubes 3 ft with the odd 4 ft er, sure the points were good but the crowds at Noosa in and out of the water are the the most I've seen in 30 odd years and growing....Carpark anyone?
Thanks guys - appreciate the feedback. Was certainly a classic swell event (Tp of 20 sec at the Goldy buoy y'day) and yet another one to put into the databank for future reference. I'm doing the forecast notes today, will have them up around 7pm local time.
Ben I surfed on Sunday over the border and it was sizey and grunty in the 3-4ft class but I highly doubt it was the 20 sec swell. In my experience surfing a 20 sec swell with a 7-9 sec tradewind swell usually means a lot of double ups when the 20sec swell arrives and not a frames. I saw little to no evidence of double ups on Sunday morning at the beach I was at.
The bigger sets on Sunday on the Tweed were absolutely long period S'ly swell.
I was at a wide open beach and you could see them pushing up the coast from the south - they'd thunder into the beach well to the south, effectively wrapping "up" the coast which gave a couple of minutes warning as to their arrival where I was surfing. The lines were slightly angled from the south, stretched an incredible length and contained an extraordinary amount of power for a wave just slightly overhead - getting caught inside resulted in a long drag underwater and a proper thumping.
It wasn't short range E'ly swell whatsoever. You could see the small inconsistent E'ly swell during the (lengthy) breaks between the southerly sets, those waves were small, peaky, didn't have much power and broke erratically along the coast with no real definition.
What was weird about the south swell was that - at least where I was surfing - there were way less closeouts, and many more A-frames than you'd usually expect. But rather than being the result of a a peaky swell combo (which is what I was expecting), it seems that there was an offshore bar or reef that was breaking the swell up. Also seemed like there were decent banks around too, which somewhat helped (I was constantly paddling back to the same patch over and over again).
That's how I saw things anyway.
I didn't say it wasn't long period s'ly groundswell just don't believe it was the 20 sec stuff.
To me it felt more like a standard 13-14 sec S/SE swell and the reason I say this is because of the lack of double ups. Work out the wave speeds of a 20 sec swell and a 8 sec swell and you'll see that it's almost impossible to not have double ups with these two swells in the water.
And where I surfed the 8 sec tradewind swell was pretty non stop so it's hard to see how there would be breaks in this swell to allow the 20 sec swell sets to arrive unimpeded.
Don! You're taking the 20 second reference literally. As per the graph in yesterday's updated notes, you'll see that the leading edge of 20 seconds arrived around 6pm Saturday night. Depending on what time you surfed Sunday, the S'ly groundswell would have been anywhere from approx 18 seconds (dawn), 15 seconds (midday) and 13 seconds (late afternoon).
The reason I referenced the 20 second periods was because it's a very unusual ocurrence (only a couple of times every year do we see these swell periods in SE Qld). And, spidermonkey said "today swell seems almost ENE" - so I presented information to suggest otherwise - which was centered around the long period S'ly swell.
Perhaps we're agreeing on the same thing then Ben but just not relaying it very well in our words. My point (without spelling it out) was that I believe Sunday's swell was not the radial spread by product from the core winds on the NW/N flank of that low as per your picture above. More along the lines of the secondary fetch on the W/SW flank of the low. Lesser strength fetch which would relate to lesser period (from what I observed at the beach on Sunday morning certainly felt less than 18 sec) but better angle to enable it to get into the coast (including SC more easily). Just my thoughts on Sunday's swell from my observations and hindcasting of the fetch. Just a shame the bloody Byron buoy is down as it could have assisted very well with the hindcasting of this system.
Unfortunately the Coffs Bouy animation for the last 48 hrs has a gap in it, but check out the 8pm (20h) multi spectral plot on Sunday 4th Oct and it shows the main swell being S/SE in direction in the 12-14 sec band.
https://new.mhl.nsw.gov.au/media/animated/index.php?station=COFHOW&path=...
Don't know how to post pictures on here otherwise I'd show it
Don, I know what you're saying. But ironically, it was the second low in the progression - the one that generated today's south swell - that had the favourable wrap from the SW quadrant. See animation here (the two storms one after the other).
As for MHL buoy data, a couple of points: (1) I'm a little suss on MHL data at the moment, following their most recent system update. We're seeing considerable errors in the direction/spectral data on a regular basis. And (2) I am not surprised that this long period energy was recorded as S/SE at the buoys anyway, as a 20 second swell period feels the ocean floor at around 310m. With the buoys typically located in 70-90m water depths, southerly swells will start swinging slowly counter-clockwise in direction as they draw closer to the coast.
Ok fair point then Ben on the secondary fetch.
Lovely hind casting discussion
I'm with Matson on this one.
Yesterdays pulse was pretty spot on too as far as the call.
Shame the reports are so far off base as the f/casting is accurate.
Hey Stu or Free or whoever,
Is it possible to access the Wave of Day shots archives?
Just scroll down, every WOTD is there. How far back you wanna go?
Today.
Different beach tho.