South-east Queensland and Northern NSW Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 2nd December)

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Best Days: No great days. If you can handle the N'ly chop there'll be bumpy NE wind waves best Sun and Mon. Also, there's a chance for a small E'ly swell later next week and into the weekend. But there's also a chance that N'ly winds will spoil it too.

Recap: Small swells and northerly winds have not allowed much surf potential over the last few days. A building NE windswell is increasing wave heights at exposed beaches but quality is low.

Building NE windswell at D'Bah this arvo.

This weekend (Dec 3rd - Dec 4th)

There’s really not much to say about the weekend forecast.

Fresh northerly winds will persist both days across all coasts, creating poor conditions at most beaches, exacerbated by a lack of groundswell.

The one positive is that winds will slowly strengthen through Saturday so Sunday should see a decent peak with 3ft sets across exposed NE facing beaches, though quality will be hard to find. Elsewhere, protected northern corners will be smaller, as will the Sunshine Coast due to a shorter fetch length.

N’ly windswells have a habit of producing an erratic spread of surfable options so don’t get your hopes up this weekend for decent waves anywhere, but if you keep an eye on the local winds and pounce when there’s a whiff of nor’west in the northerly breeze, then you may score some runners down the back beaches that offer some protection. 

There’ll be some small underlying east swell in the mix both days but with these winds, does it really matter? 

Next week (Dec 5th onwards)

Small local swells and northerly winds will persist through Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday (in SE Qld) whilst a shallow trough will move into the Mid North Coast during Wednesday, offering a mild mid-week southerly change. 

Light winds and sea breezes are then expected across all regions on Thursday ahead of a return to northerlies next Friday and into the weekend. 

Broadly speaking, the surf outlook for the longer term period is terrible. 

However, there are a couple of regions to keep a watch on.

First up, a closed low is expected to form within a surface trough off the Southern/Central NSW coast around Tuesday, before this system tracks out into the central Tasman Sea. It doesn’t look like much of a swell producer right now - mainly due to the unfavourable easterly track - but if the models slow or stall this pattern, we could see some easterly swell potential mid-late week. 

Otherwise, the other area of interest I’ll be keeping a close eye on is a small easterly dip south of Fiji around Monday, which is expected to remain slow moving through the week as it broadens an easterly fetch to the south. This has the potential to set up a useful easterly swell later next week and into the weekend - early ballpark 2-3ft sets - but I’ll have more on that in Monday’s update.

Have a great weekend!