South-east Queensland and Northern NSW Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Wednesday 21st December)

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Best Days: Entire period: plenty of decent windows of good conditions with a lully E'ly swell, initially reaching a peak around Sun but with more swell due through all of next week (I'm yet to see a definitive break in the pattern).

Recap: Tuesday offered a fun morning of waves just about everywhere, with 2-3ft of easterly swell across most beaches and Northern NSW also benefiting from a slightly bigger S'ly groundswell. Winds were light and variable through the morning ahead of afternoon NE winds. Today we’ve seen northerly winds across the coast and a continuation of easterly swell but with yesterday’s southerly swell easing rapidly across Northern NSW. A southerly change is pushing slowly northwards, in fact much more slowly than expected in Monday’s notes - it had only reached Coffs Harbour around 3pm and Yamba at 6pm (Evans Head saw a southerly wind change at 6:30pm but it’s only light). This change should slowly push across SE Qld beaches later this evening.

This week (Dec 22nd - 23rd)

No major change to the forecast period. 

Our persistent E’ly swell from the tropical depression out near Fiji over the weekend will maintain energy through Thursday and Friday - the models have a very slight easing trend but overall I think this will probably affect the consistency more so than the size. So, expect occasional 2-3ft sets across most open beaches with smaller waves running down the various points. There may be some tidal influence at times, and as these long range stationary sources have a habit of ebbing and flowing, there may be brief periods of smaller surf. But on the balance there should be waves most of the time.  

There’s no new southerly swell trailing the approaching southerly change, so Thursday will only see E’ly swell across Northern NSW. However, the parent low to this change tracked SE of Tasmania today, with SW gales about its northern flank. They’re not very aligned within our swell window but a small southerly groundswell is still expected to glance the coast throughout Friday. 

It’s hard to be confident in the size range; the fetch is quite good in its length with an almost stationary band of gales occupying the same part of our swell window for a decent length of time, however their off axis alignment is concerning. What this will probably result in is a limited spread of southerly swell to a handful of reliable south swell magnets on Friday morning - so don’t be surprised if a seemingly reliable beach doesn’t quite perform to expectations. Very inconsistent 3ft sets is certainly the upper range for the swell magnets across south swell magnets south of Byron Bay (with smaller surf elsewhere). Expect an easing trend into Friday afternoon.

As for local winds, we’ll see a small ridge across the Qld coast directing moderate to (rarely) fresh S/SE winds across most locations on Thursday, with a chance for isolated regions of early light SW winds. Winds will ease rapidly across the Mid North Coast but will persist about SE Qld and Far Northern NSW beaches into the afternoon. 

Friday’s looking good for the early session with light variable winds and afternoon sea breezes. There should be plenty of fun waves for much of the day as the sea breezes probably won’t have too much strength.

This weekend (Dec 24th - 25th)

No changes to the weekend outlook. 

Friday’s small south swell will almost disappear from Northern NSW beaches by Saturday so we’ll be relying on a slow rebuild of distant E’ly swell from the tropical depression out near Fiji. Additionally, a new ridge will build through the lower Coral Sea and Northern Tasman Sea, generating some short range energy that should fill in the gaps. This should slightly boost the surf zone consistency through Sunday.

Wave heights should reach a broad plateau in size through later Saturday and Sunday, probably around 3-4ft at exposed beaches with smaller sets running down the points.

Conditions will be reasonably good but not perfect; the building ridge through the Coral Sea will direct moderate easterly winds across the region though with an unstable troughy pattern close to the coast, we will see periods of variable winds - more likely in the mornings, but in all honesty they could happen at any time of the day.

Next week (Dec 26th onwards)

We’ve got a great long range forecast ahead if you dig fun sized beach breaks. 

The distant E’ly swell slowly building towards a peak this weekend will ease from Monday onwards, but the building ridge in the Coral Sea is expected to remain almost stationary, and will rebuild a similar sized short to mid range E’ly swell across most regions.

The latitudinal depth of the fetch (i.e. north-to-south coverage) will be quite extensive; ordinarily we’d expect smaller surf across the Mid North Coast from a Coral Sea ridge but the fetch will actually remain inside the broader swell window so we should see very good surf across all regions. Surf size may be marginally bigger across the Sunshine Coast and perhaps the Gold and Tweed Coast but probably not a great deal more so than remaining Northern NSW coasts. Most beaches should see around 3ft for much of the week, closer to 3-4ft across parts of SE Qld and Far Northern NSW.

In addition to this, the models are tipping a new tropical low will form towards the southern end of New Caledonia around Tuesday, which could end up being a useful source of bigger E’ly swell through the second half of the week - however that’s still quite some time away. 

Regardless, for all intents and purposes we are certainly looking at an extended run of activity out of our eastern swell window, which is only a good thing. Our southern swell window is expected to remain quite for some time. 

See you Friday!