South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 3rd June)

Best Days: Sun: very large clean waves at selected locations. Mon thru' Thurs: solid, clean surf with mainly W'ly thru' NW winds

Recap: Building S'ly swells across Northern NSW on Thursday, reaching 4ft+ at south facing beaches in the afternoon, easing a little overnight but still offering fun clean waves early this morning. A new short range E'ly swell buildt across the entire region today with onshore winds freshening. 

This weekend (Saturday 4th - Sunday 5th)

We have a weekend of two halves ahead.

Aside from torrential rain across many areas, Saturday will be characterised by strengthening NE winds and building NE swells. There’ll be some initial short range E’ly swell in the water early morning, thanks to the current ridge across the southern Coral Sea that’s generating today’s new energy. However this will be quickly overtaken by short range NE swell that should reach a stormy peak around 6-8ft+ by late afternoon across SE Qld and Far Northern NSW. 

We may see a slight delay in the upwards trend across the Mid North Coast on Saturday; a small embedded low in the trough line will contribute most of the initial kick in size and this looks to be best positioned for northern locations at first. 

But with poor winds locally there's really not much to get excited about from a surfing point of view. Throw in the inclement weather and it's a day better spent in preparation for the upcoming event. 

As the trough pushes south throughout Saturday, we’ll eventually see winds become variable before a fresh westerly outflow extends across the coastal margin.

The timing on this is crucial as we’ll need at least a few hours for surface conditions to clean up. Right now, model data has this occurring in the early hours of Sunday morning across SE Qld - indeed, the BOM currently expect winds to shift W’ly "during the morning", but I have a feeling it’ll develop sooner than this - later Sunday night (between dinnertime and midnight). As such, surface conditions should be quite clean for much of Sunday.

As for size, Sunday’s looking at a combination of easing swell heights but growing periods. The latter looks like it’ll be more influential than the former, which means surf size should build a little from Saturday but on the balance it’ll be the improvement in surf quality that'll be most obvious. 

At this stage it’s hard to find any reason to deviate too much away from previous size estimates, but it’s worth reiterating that surf size will be larger with increasing southerly latitude. So, the smallest peak in size will be found across the Sunshine Coast; the largest across the lower Mid North Coast.

To that end, it’s probably easiest to round up this commentary by listing a likely peak surf size for each major region, relative to its open beaches. Obviously, sheltered points and corners will be smaller, however under this swell direction, there is a significantly smaller number of ‘sheltered’ locations in SE Qld and Northern NSW. 

And as stated in Wednesday’s notes, the difficulty for Sunday is (1) estimating just how big the surf will reach (because the fetch is mainly aimed at locations south of us), and (2) working out what surfable options there are under these conditions.

Unlike large south or south-east swells, which offer smaller, more manageable conditions inside sheltered southern corners and point breaks, groundswells from this direction tend to blanket the coast in a relatively uniform size. And sheltered corners (let alone open beaches) often can’t handle the size, meaning that there’s only a couple of workable options across vast tracts of coastline. 

So, Sunday’s peak surf size is likely to play out as per the following:

• Sunshine Coast: 5-6ft+
• Gold/Tweed Coasts: 6-8ft+
• Northern Rivers: 8-10ft+
• Mid North Coast: 10ft+

The developing westerly flow will first kick in across SE Qld coasts (Saturday night), reaching the Northern Rivers in the early hours of Sunday morning and then the Mid North Coast around dawn. So conditions will be best in all locations by the afternoon but we should see better morning conditions up north than down south.

Next week (Monday 6th onwards)

The developing synoptic setup looks equally in favour of great sizeable waves into next week, and small disappointing leftovers. But on the balance I think we’re looking at an extended spell of great, solid waves. 

Ordinarily, a southward retreating trough aimed towards southern locations would generate a small spread back into Northern NSW and SE Qld. But the sheer length, breadth and coverage of this fetch is quite amazing - its expected to extend right into Fijian longitudes, possibly even further east later next week, though it’ll be smaller in spatial coverage by this time and will be a long way from the mainland.

The long and short is that we’re looking at fluctuating E/NE tending E’ly swell (more east in northern locations) from Monday thru’ Thursday, with mainly westerly winds. There’s a chance for an afternoon northerly on Wednesday as a front approaches from the west, though this is more likely around the Mid North Coast than the Far North and SE Qld regions. Winds should revert to the NW on Thursday morning then W’ly again for the rest of the week. 

Sunday’s large swell will ease significantly into Monday, and once again the largest waves will be found across the Mid North Coast with smaller waves to the north. 

As a starting point, the Gold and Tweed Coasts should hover around 4-6ft on Monday, easing back to 3-5ft through Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Smaller surf is expected across the Sunshine Coast but larger waves are expected across the Northern River (6ft+ Mon, easing to 4-6ft Tues/Wed/Thurs) whilst the Mid North Coast should see larger surf again (6-8ft+ Mon, easing to 5-6ft Tues/Wed/Thurs). 

This is just a broad overview for now, as future model runs are likely to alter these projections over the coming days - and once satellite data becomes available we should be able to better identify individual pulses throughout the extended forecast period. 

Looking further ahead, and apart from a continuation of long range E’ly swell from the backend of this fetch as it retreats east of Tonga (potentially maintaining inconsistent 3-4ft surf at open Northern NSW beaches right through next weekend), we’re looking at a strong series of fronts south of Tasmania from Thursday that should kick up some new S’ly swell for Northern NSW next weekend too.

Prior to this, a small low is expected off the Southern NSW coast around Tuesday but it doesn’t look like it’ll be beneficial for swell production for our region due to a poor alignment and small fetch length. 

So, there ya have it.. let's see how it all plays out! Have a great weekend.