South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Monday 11th April)

Best Days: Fun outer points in SE Qld Wed/Thurs/Fri/Sat. Good beachies this weekend. 

Recap: A generally small, slow weekend of waves. Most beaches picked up a couple of feet of leftover east swell (in the north) and south swell (in the south) on Saturday, but surf size fell slightly through Sunday and northerly winds both days allowed for only a period of clean conditions in the morning. A new long period south swell was expected to arrive on Sunday but it pushed through later than expected, with the Coffs Harbour buoy picking up a spike in Tp just after dinnertime. As such we’ve seen another day of tiny residual waves in SE Qld today, and small southerly swell across exposed south facing beaches in Northern NSW. 

This week (April 12th - 15th)

Unfortunately, the south swell expected for this week was downgraded over the weekend.

The frontal passage still is broadly in line with earlier timings but the progression has been split, weakened and focussed away from our swell window. So, we’re still going to see a few days of south swell but it’s going to be much smaller and less effective than previously hoped. 

The good news is that I’m still expecting a ridge to anchor in across the coast, and this will be end up being a more dominant swell source for much of the forecast period. And it'll favour a broader swathe of our coastline too.

Quickly jumping back to the south swells: I was never confident that they’d benefit SE Qld anyway, so with a downgrade we can certainly write off their influence north of the border.

South of Byron though, we should see a building trend through Tuesday ahead of a peak on Wednesday, holding somewhere in the 3-4ft range at south facing beaches at the height of the swell (maybe Tuesday PM across the Mid North Coast, more likely Wednesday across the Northern Rivers). 

The following up southerly swells later in the week - whilst still likely to exhibit decent swell periods - will be quite a bit smaller and will generally lie below the pre-existing short range SE energy, which I’m about to detail.

So, this building ridge across the Coral Sea. In fact we’re looking at the merger between two fetches - a weak depression in the northern Coral Sea will extend southwards over the coming days, joining with a broadening ridge across the central/northern Tasman Sea. This fetch will then remain in place until about the end of the week. 

Unfortunately no great strength is likely within the fetch, but its coverage will be considerable so we’ll see some useful trade swell across most coasts from Wednesday onwards. It’ll build slowly until we see a peak around Friday afternoon or thereabouts, somewhere in the 3-4ft range across most coastlines, maybe even a few bigger waves across exposed beaches in Northern NSW. 

However, SE winds will be a factor throughout this period. They’re expected to remain fresh at times and will consequently confine the best waves to the points: exposed beaches will be rather rough and ready. Tuesday will see lighter winds as the ridge initially encroaches the coastal margin, but the surf will be small anyway.  Wednesday, Thursday and probably Friday will be wind affected unless you can find some shelter. 

We are looking at a relaxing pressure gradient for the weekend though, and this may kick in a little earlier (i.e. Friday afternoon) - especially south of Yamba - but I’ll take a closer look at this on Wednesday.

This weekend (April 16th - 17th)

Looks like a fun weekend of generally easing trade swells.

Friday afternoon’s peak should hold into Saturday morning (3-4ft+ exposed beaches, smaller on the points) but for the most part we’re looking at a gradual drop in size. Sunday's likely to remain in the 2-3ft range at most open locations. 

Fortunately, the ridge is expected to weaken by the weekend so conditions should be pretty good. We’ll still experience some form of onshore breeze but it won’t be too strong, and probably won’t kick in until late mornings anyway.

In any case, the weekend certainly has the thumbs up from me at this stage. And we’ll see a broad coverage of swell across the coast, at a size range that should favour just about every beach break. This should help to shift the crowds around.

Next week (April 18th onwards)

No major systems on the boil for next week but there are a couple of areas to keep a close watch on. A small depression off New Zealand’s North Island on Friday and Saturday should kick up a minor east swell for Monday, along with an unrelated broader fetch just south of Fiji around the same time. We won’t get much size from this but occasional 2-3ft sets seem a reasonable ball park at this stage. This should hold into Tuesday.

There’s also a suggestion for a broadening ridge further easy (NE of New Zealand) next week which could give rise to an extended period of small but fun east swell later the following week, but this is still some time away.

Otherwise, the entire Tasman Sea looks like it could be heading into a potentially volatile period next week too, with a lot of instability and a chance for a decent swell generating system to crop up somewhere. Right now the charts don’t have a lot to work with, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a major upgrade over the coming days - more likely across the southern Tasman Sea (aimed into southern NSW) but let’s wait and see what happens.