South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 15th January)

Best Days: Sat/Sun: best suited to SE Qld outer points, mainly the southern Gold Coast. Mon/Tues/Wed: small combo of swells from the S/SE and E, with mainly good winds in the mornings. Thurs onwards (poss until following Tues): extended run of excellent, but very inconsistent long range E'ly groundswell. 

Recap: Northerly winds made Thursday’s conditions quite tricky but we did see a building S’ly swell across Northern NSW that reached 3ft to almost 4ft at exposed south facing beaches late afternoon, but with very little size in SE Qld. This swell has steadily eased today (early 2-3ft sets in Northern NSW, tiny waves north of the border) and a gusty S’ly tending SE change has pushed across the region, blowing out most locations this afternoon. We’re now seeing a steady increase in short range S/SE swell across Northern NSW - a reasonable upwards trend at the Byron buoy, along with a major increase at Crowdy Head - but there’s been no appreciable kick in size throughout the Gold Coast yet (let alone the Sunny Coast). But I don’t think it’s too far off SE Qld.

Crowdy Head buoy

This weekend (Jan 16 - 17th)

We have a relatively linear outlook for the weekend. It’ll be quite windy from the S/SE both days - strongest Saturday, easing into Sunday - and surf size will mirror the wind outlook, peaking early Saturday and abating steadily thereafter.

The source of the surf will mainly be short to mid-range S/SE swell trailing today’s change, of which the responsible fetch extends a fair distance southwards. However the acute southerly direction will significantly limit size across SE Qld, especially at the points which will offer the best conditions.

That being said, SE Qld will probably provide the best conditions across the region. Saturday morning should see set waves around 3ft at the outer Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast points (much larger at south swell magnets, but wind affected).

South of the border, south facing beaches should see easy 5-6ft sets early Saturday - maybe a little smaller south from Coffs, owing to the short fetch length, but with much smaller surf at the sheltered points and protected corners, due to the swell direction and relatively short period. Semi-exposed points will sit mid-way between this in the size department, but there’s likely to be a fair degree of wobble through the lineup.

Surf size will taper off slowly through Saturday afternoon and further into Sunday, but with a firm ridge remaining across the Coral Sea we’re looking at another day of waves best suited to the outer SE Qld points, especially the southern Gold Coast. Everywhere else is likely to be quite wind affected, with the airstream likely to veer more S/SE to SE throughout the day.

There’s an outside chance for a few selected pockets of early SW winds - probably just the southern Gold Coast and a couple of others - but on the whole expect gusty side-shore conditions.

A small easterly swell will also fill into the mix on Sunday, from the remnants of ex-TC Ula north of New Zealand yesterday and today, but the likely small size and high degree of inconsistency probably means it’ll be hard to detected below the primary S/SE swell train. This should hold into Monday though favouring most open beaches across both regions. 

Next week (Jan 18th onwards)

Jeez, the models have had a strange old time with this secondary low forming in the central Tasman Sea this weekend. They’ve subsequently downgraded it a little, stalled its evolution, and also pushed it further east, with a less convincing northward path too. This reduces its swell potential so I’ve pulled back wave height estimates (and timings) for the Monday pulse.

As such Monday is probably looking at a peaky combo of leftover swells from the S/SE and E/SE, with size in the 2-3ft range across most open beaches, perhaps a little smaller across parts of the Gold and Sunshine Coast (away from exposed beaches), and also south from about Coffs Harbour. 

The new SE swell is likely to arrive very late Monday across the Mid North Coast, peaking into Tuesday morning across the remaining Northern NSW coastline, but set waves are unlikely to crack much more than 3ft at south facing beaches. North of the border I doubt we’ll see much size at all. This swell will then start to ease from later Tuesday, and will probably be all gone by Wednesday.

Conditions look pretty good for the first half of the week with a slowly weakening ridge across SE Qld maintaining moderate SE winds on Monday (lighter SW early morning), tending light and variable on Tuesday. Both days should see light and variable conditions in Northern NSW with afternoon sea breezes. Northerly winds will return Wednesday though they’ll be strongest across the Mid North Coast and may not cause any problems north of Byron Bay until Thursday.

The previously discussed tropical activity in the South Pacific has evolved into the formation of Tropical Cyclone Victor. And I gotta say, it’s looking better and better with each model run. The only downside is the enormous distance between TC Victor and the mainland, as it’s otherwise starting to look very promising in both size, scope, direction and orientation towards Australia’s East Coast. Although it needs to be pointed out that there is some disagreement between the broader global models so we will need to refine these notes in more detail on Monday.

At this stage TC Victor is expected to continue intensifying for the next few days, probably reaching Cat 3 or Cat 4 status by early next week. A likely SW track at moderate speeds should help in setting up a captured fetch scenario, and at this stage it’s expected to hang within our swell window at strength for quite a few days. 

So without getting too specific, this probably means we’re looking at an extended E’ly swell event for much of the Northern NSW and SE Qld coasts. The large travel distance will shave off wave heights and the sets will be very inconsistent at times, but at this stage I think sometime around Thursday morning should herald the arrival of long period E’ly swell, building throughout the day into the 3ft range, and then fluctuating anywhere between 3ft and very occasionally 5ft from Friday right through until about the following Tuesday. Most of the time it’ll hover at the lower end of the spectrum but I think we’ll see three or four embedded pulsey periods over that five day stretch where wave heights should nudge the upper end. But the inconsistency will be a major factor, and it's too early to have confidence in the local winds yet (we may see northerlies round out the second half of the week).  

More on this in Monday’s update.