South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 30th October)

Best Days: No great days in the short term. Saturday morning at south swell magnets in Northern NSW before the winds swing onshore. Wednesdsay should see a very good, but very inconsistent long period S'ly swell with *fingers crossed* light winds. Best suited to Northern NSW though, as it'll be very small in SE Qld.

Recap: Wednesday’s tidy south swell combo eased slowly throughout Thursday but still offered some fun waves early morning. Another small, dual pulse of southerly and south-southeasterly swells have provided fun waves today, but confined to south swell magnets south of the border. The swell source and direction has not favoured most beaches across Southeast Queensland, with tiny residual energy across this coast today.

This weekend (Saturday 31st - Sunday 1st)

Not a great weekend for waves with mainly small southerly swells expected to become wind affected from the north.

Southeast Qld: The current south swell combo isn’t doing much away from exposed south swell magnets, and with small southerly swells expected to persist into the weekend there’s not much to get excited about. 

Saturday morning should offer clean conditions with light variable winds, but they’ll tend NE throughout the day, so head to the most south-friendly beach you can think of. Freshening NE winds all day Sunday will wipe out the chances of anything worthwhile; as it is the waves are only expected to be small anyway, so there's nothing to lose. Honestly, there are better things to do this weekend away from the surf. 

Northern NSW: There’s been plenty of fun south swell across Southern NSW today, and this should filter up into Northern NSW on Saturday with another small pulse due into Sunday. No major size is expected, probably somewhere in the 2-3ft+ range at south swell magnets both days but very inconsistent at times. Expect smaller surf at beaches not completely open to the south.

Light winds are expected early Saturday morning (this'll be the best time to surf) ahead of a freshening NE breeze into the afternoon and the northerly flow will become quite gusty into Sunday, especially south of Yamba. As such you’ll need to tuck into a sheltered northern corner for the cleanest conditions. 

These northerly winds should whip up a small local windswell but without favourable conditions there’s not much to get excited about.

Next week (Monday 2nd onwards)

A slow moving trough up the coast on Monday will maintain the northerly regime across both regions, but we should see an early period of NW winds in some locations (confidence is not high on where though). 

There should be a small peaky mix of leftover S’ly swell and NE windswell, with the latter being small across the northern regions (north of Ballina, say 1-2ft), however north facing beaches between Yamba and Seal Rocks should pick up occasional 2-3ft sets. There may be a few windows of opportunity but on the balance it’s not worth a day off work.

This trough doesn’t look like it’s going to be a swell producer for us, either in its initial stages (off the East Coast on Monday) or its latter developments as its re-intensifies off the West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island some time on Tuesday. We’re likely to see a small SE pulse from this source later in the week but at this stage there are more interesting possibilities in other swell windows. 

A deep polar low is expected to rapidly intensify off the Ice Shelf, SW of Tasmania, on Saturday. Winds are modelled to reach 40-50kts, and it looks like there’ll be a good fetch form in our acute southern swell window. This fetch is expected to generate a quality, if somewhat inconsistent S’ly groundswell across Northern NSW for Wednesday with set waves likely to reach 3-4ft+ at times at south friendly beaches.

The system has been slightly downgraded in the latest model runs but nevertheless it’s worth considering as it appears that we’ll be between local synoptic system at this time, resulting in light winds across most areas. I'll update with a little more clarity on the size and timing in Monday's report, with the availabilty of satellite data.

Unfortunately, SE Qld will see much less size from this swell so you’ll want to consider hitting up a south swell magnet for the best waves as the outer points are expected to be on the small and very inconsistent side of the coin.

The trailing fetch behind this polar low is expected to be quite broad, and this should assist in slowing the easing trend through the second half of the week (from the south). Interspersed in the mix during this time may be a small SE swell from the aforementioned redeveloping trough/low off New Zealand, but no great size is likely. 

Otherwise, the second half of next week looks like we’ll see a developing trough off the coast that should build into a swell generating position for at least southern regions of the Northern NSW coast, if not all regions (and SE Qld too). It’s too far out to have confidence but the good news is that the longer term period is certainly quite active, and also somewhat at odds with what would ordinarily be expected at this time of the year (it really has been a good Spring for surf, hasn’t it?) 

One other area to keep an eye out for later next week and into the weekend is a sneaky SE swell window off the ice shelf, S/SE of New Zealand early next week. The same polar low expected to generate our Wednesday swell is modelled to form an incredible fetch upwards of 50kts+between 170E-180E, between Monday and Wednesday. It’s a very long distance away and the map projections are slightly misleading as to the actual size of the fetch (longitudinal width decreases with increasing proximity to the poles.. read: the fetch is smaller than it looks on most charts) however I wouldn’t be surprised if we pick up extremely inconsistent but well defined 2-3ft sets at south swell magnets some time around next Saturday and Sunday (probably just in Northern NSW). Let’s take a closer look on Monday.