South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Monday 21st December)

Best Days: Tues/Wed: fun trade swell peaking Tues easing Wed, plus a new SE and S'ly swell for Wed in Northern NSW, with mainly light winds and sea breezes in the north and developing southerlies across the Mid North Coast. Thurs onwards: slowly building swells from the SE, E and E/NE, possibly sizeable by the weekend and likely to remain quite active into next week. 

Recap: Despite a slow easing trend over the weekend, most open beaches delivered good waves. Saturday morning was still a healthy 2ft+ across most Gold/Tweed Coast beaches with bigger sets on the Sunshine Coast (though a little smaller south of Ballina) and the size drop into Sunday was minor enough to not cause any inconvenience. The short range, peaky nature of the swell favoured the beach breaks quite well and conditions were clean through the mornings ahead of obligatory sea breezes. Today we’ve seen a small, steady increase in new swell across the region though it’s a smidge below expectations right now (sets between 2ft and almost 3ft at open beaches in the north, though lacking some strength). However, model guidance suggests the peak is not due until later today or early tomorrow, so let’s just hope it’s lagging behind. Northerly winds are again freshening across the region. 

This week (December 22nd - 25th)

Assuming the model guidance is generally on target - and there’s no reason to think otherwise - we should see a peak tomorrow in east swell.

It has however slightly downgraded wave heights since Friday so I am going to correspondingly pull back my Tuesday estimates from 3ft+ to 3ft on the Gold Coast (at open beaches), 3-4ft to 3ft+ on the Sunshine Coast (again, open beaches - obviously smaller on the inner points), and 2-3ft across the Northern NSW coast down to about Coffs, where it’ll be a little smaller through to Seal Rocks. However we should see some additional NE windswell across the Mid North Coast thanks to the recent local airstream.

The good news for Tuesday is that a stalled trough off the Southern NSW coast is expected to instigate a weak pressure gradient across Northern NSW and SE Qld, so we should see light variable winds early then light to moderate afternoon sea breezes. Conditions probably won’t be perfect (i.e. some leftover lump and bump in places) but it’ll be well worth a paddle.

If you’re in the far southern regions - i.e. south of Port Macquarie - keep an eye out for the possibility of gusty SE winds that’ll develop on the southern flank of the trough line, which is expected to be around Forster or thereabouts, but may extend northwards later in the day. 

On Wednesday, the current trade swell will be easing but we’ve got some reinforcement inbound for open Northern NSW beaches with good southerly exposure, courtesy of two sources. 

Firstly, the stalled trough off Southern NSW today will consolidate a modest SE fetch through Tuesday - thanks to a developing high in the southern Tasman Sea - that should generate some useful swell in the 2-3ft range (we’ll actually see this swell reaching the Mid North Coast later Tuesday). 

Additionally, a deep low that formed south of Tasmania on Sunday has generated a small long period S’ly swell that’ll provide very inconsistent 2-3ft sets at south swell magnets. Both of these swell will not favour SE Qld though, due to their direction and orientation. So expect smaller surf north of the border on Wednesday.

In general, winds are looking to be mainly light and variable on Wednesday with sea breezes however the trough line near Forster is expected to extend a narrow finger of S’ly winds across the Mid North Coast that may reach as far north as Yamba or even Ballina during the day, though with strongest winds in the south. Keep an eye on the local obs to see how it’s progressing as the models are usually pretty poor at capturing these events in advance.

The high in the southern Tasman Sea is then expected to slowly muscle up through the rest of the week, along with a building secondary ridge through the southern Coral Sea as an active monsoon pattern approaches from the north-west, also likely developing a tropical cyclone in the Gulf of Carpentaria prior to Christmas. 

The upshot of this is that we’re looking at a mix of slowly building SE thru’ E'ly and eventually E/NE swell trains through Xmas Eve (Thursday) and Xmas Day (Friday). No great size is expected, and the synoptic airstream will be moderate onshore, but there’s likely to be periods of slack winds in and around this time that’ll lead to good surf across various outer points in Northern NSW and SE Qld. 

As a rough guesstimate, by close of business Friday we should see set waves somewhere around 3-4ft in Northern NSW, and 2-3ft in SE Qld (the E/NE swell impacting Queensland will probably kick in over the weekend). I’ll fine tune the specifics in more detail in Wednesday’s notes, but the good news is that there’ll be fun waves most days. 

This weekend (December 26th - 27th)

As suggested in Friday’s notes, we are looking at a confluence of dynamic weather systems in our near swell window in the time period following Christmas. 

At this stage the models are still a little hazy on what might eventuate, as there are several notable systems at play - a broad, moist easterly airstream across much of the Northern Tasman Sea, a developing monsoon pattern through the northern Coral Sea, and an active coastal trough across Southern NSW that’s currently expected to drive a vigorous southerly change across the East Coast through Saturday and Sunday. 

Normally I’m not one to sit on the fence, but with such a dynamic mix of ingredients being added to the system, it’s simply too hard to pin down specifics at this early stage. And it will probably take quite a few days for things to line up too.

But, there is steadily increasing confidence that not only will there be building swells all weekend from several directions, that some locations are looking at the onset of solid, potentially large waves at times. Let’s take a closer look on Wednesday.

Our surf model is estimating 5-6ft E/NE swell across the Sunshine Coast on Sunday

Next week (December 28th onwards)

As per the weekend’s notes, it’s hard to gauge any specifics in next week’s surf trend apart from a strong likelihood that there’ll be a lot of it, from several directions (lots of SE swell across Northern NSW, tending more E'ly throughout SE Qld) and with plenty of size and strength at times. I’ll have a better idea over the coming days.