South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 22nd April)

Best Days: Outer SE Qld and Far Northern NSW points Sun/Mon with a new short range swell. Mon/Tues/Wed also looking potentially fun across inner Qld points as the swell swings more to the east, though it will be easing from Tues onwards. Fun beachies Wed onwards as the trade swell slowly eases and winds become light and variable.

Recap: As expected, Thursday saw a low point in residual east and south swell ahead of a nice small pulse today out of the east. Open beaches in Far Northern NSW have hovered somewhere in the 2ft to almost 3ft range at times, with slightly smaller surf south of Coffs and also across SE Qld. Winds have been mainly light and variable. 

This weekend (April 23rd - 24th)

Sunday is still the pick of the weekend.

Saturday will start off with small residual easterly swell, probably not too dissimilar in size to today, but with freshening southerly winds as a change moves up the coast. These winds will deteriorate surf quality at the open beaches so apart from a possible brief window of SW winds at dawn, it’s hard to imagine there’ll be much quality on offer at exposed spots. Surf size is expected to remain small at the outer points (which will handle the developing southerly the best).

Unfortunately, the primary fetch associated with this change will have only reached the Hunter coast by dawn, so the bulk of the swell increase is not likely until Sunday - even across Northern NSW. We should see a building trend throughout Saturday - especially across the Mid North Coast - but it’ll be short range in nature, and very south in direction, and with a lot of accompanying wind. So those locations picking up the size will be blown out, and protected spots will initially remain rather small.

In contrast, Sunday’s shaping up to be a great day for the SE Qld points. As a strong ridge builds across the coast, winds will veer more S/SE and the fetch will extend out int he central/northern Tasman Sea. There’ll be a large range in wave heights between exposed beaches and protected locations but we should see plenty of options across Far Northern NSW and SE Qld. 

At this stage a peak in size is likely late in the day - up to 3-4ft at the outer SE Qld points by the afternoon, with larger but much choppier 4-5ft surf at exposed south facing beaches. The more protected SE Qld points (i.e. Noosa) should start to see something small and workable into the afternoon though Monday is looking to be the best option for these locations. 

Some exposed spots in Far Northern NSW (more open to the swell) may see larger 4-6ft surf as the swell reaches a peak in the afternoon, though obviously the only surfable waves will be much smaller options inside protected corners. Expect a lot of sweep along the coast too due to these sustained, gusty southerly conditions. 

A similar trend of swell and wind is expected along remaining Northern NSW coasts though surf size may tail off a little south of Coffs. Winds will veer more SE across the Mid North Coast which will certainly limit the amount of surfable locations. 

Next week (April 25th - 29th)

A large, slow moving high pressure system in the Tasman Sea will maintain plenty of swell across SE Qld for much of next week. 

Initially, the fetch will hold at strength through Sunday but with a slight anti-clockwise orientation (read: more east in its alignment), which is a great outcome for protected locations as it'll allow for a broader coverage of size on Monday. Local winds will be fresh and gusty from the SE but there’ll be lots of waves on the points on Anzac Day; we could see 4-6ft surf across open Gold and Sunshine Coast beaches to start the week, with 3-5ft waves across the outer points, and 2-3ft surf on the inner points. 

A similar size range is likely in Far Northern NSW but with the fetch occupying the Northern Tasman Sea, we’ll see surf size start to fall away slowly with increasing southerly latitude, south of about Yamba. Still, Monday should provide strong surf across most coasts and with continuing SE winds - albeit easing in strength - protected locations will again be your best choice.

From here on, we’re looking at a steady run of smaller but super fun trade swell, thanks to the Tasman high anchoring a ridge across the southern Coral Sea and northern Tasman Sea. Surf size will slowly ease from Tuesday onwards but I doubt it’ll drop below 3ft at most open beaches until next weekend. Slightly smaller surf is likely south of about Ballina or Yamba.

Even better - local winds should become light to moderate by Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday, so even though surf size will gradually drop, surface conditions will clean up considerably, allowing some great options at the open beaches. 

Next weekend and beyond (April 30th onwards)

Current indications are that the Tasman Sea’s slow moving high pressure system will migrate across New Zealand mid-late next week, setting up a new fetch of trade winds north of NZ and stretching out into the South Pacific. This should continue to supply small easterly swells through next weekend and the first half of the following week. More on this in Monday’s update.