South-east Queensland and Northern NSW Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 6th January)

Sign up to Swellnet’s newsletter and receive the South-east Queensland and Northern NSW Forecaster Notes and latest news sent directly to your inbox. Upon signup you'll also enter the draw to win a surf trip to P-Pass for you and a mate. It doesn’t get much easier so click HERE to sign up now.

Best Days: No amazing days but there'll be small peaky beachies most days worth a quick early paddle. Biggest surf expected on Sunday as the trade swell reaches a peak, though local winds will create average conditions at open beaches in SE Qld and Far Northern NSW.

Recap: A small E’ly swell across Far Northern NSW and SE Qld hasn't offered much more than a slow 2ft wave over the last two days, however as expected the Mid North Coast has picked up bigger surf thanks to a slightly better aligned fetch in the Tasman Sea, with sets around the 3ft mark observed across Coffs Harbour and Port Macquarie regions. 

Fun waves at Coffs Harbour this afternoon, via our new Park Beach surfcam

This weekend (Jan 7th - Jan 8th)

No changes to the weekend forecast.

A strengthening ridge across the Northern Tasman and lower Coral Seas will build E’ly swells about all coasts over the coming days, with the biggest surf showing across SE Qld beaches. We’re looking at a peak in size throughout Sunday - so, expect smaller surf on Saturday, especially in the morning - and the Sunshine Coast will probably see sets reaching a peak around 4ft, with smaller 3-4ft surf across the Gold and Tweed Coasts and then smaller 3ft surf across remaining Northern NSW beaches.

In fact, only the SE Qld and Far Northern NSW coasts will really see much of an upwards trend as the Mid North Coast’s weekend size won’t be too dissimilar to today’s heights. 

Unfortunately, a predominant moderate to fresh onshore flow will create bumpy conditions across most beaches from the Sunshine Coast to about Ballina. There’s a slim chance for isolated regions of light variable winds early morning (and also in and around passing showers) but for the most part expect below average surface conditions at open beaches. Surf size will be smaller running down the points too.

Winds should be lighter from Yamba to Seal Rocks throughout Saturday and most of Sunday, ahead of an freshening afternoon NE breeze on Sunday. Without a synoptic offshore, this basically means there’ll be a greater chance for more extended periods of variable winds.

Also in the water from very late Saturday (lower Mid North Coast) through Sunday (remaining Northern NSW coast, south of Byron) is a small long period S’ly groundswell, generated by a vigorous mid-week Southern Ocean low passing well south of the continent. This will only favour south swell magnets, with inconsistent sets in the 2-3ft range at times. The E’ly energy will certainly be the dominant swell train in the water.

Next week (Jan 9th onwards)

The weekend’s Tasman/Coral Sea ridge will be anchored across the Central Queensland coast by a coastal trough. This is expected to weaken early next week, and at the same time a new tropical depression is expected to form south of the Solomon Islands.

The models have perked this system up nicely in the latest model runs, suggesting a tropical cyclone in the central Coral Sea by Tuesday or Wednesday. However at this stage it looks like it’ll remain largely outside of our swell window(s). 

However, this is a dynamic development which I’ve been expecting for quite some time, so I’ll keep a close eye on proceedings as very small alterations in model guidance could have a dramatic change in the surf outlook for our region.

At this stage the most likely scenario is a small NE swell for SE Qld beaches around Thursday (say, inconsistent 2-3ft sets if we're lucky), but I’ll update as more information comes to hand. These kinds of systems are highly erratic even with short range forecasts (let along long range) and it's an unusual swell window that doesn't have a lot of history to corroborate with, which widens the error bars somewhat.

Otherwise, there’s nothing else of any great interest in the long term charts. Monday will see easing trade swell across all regions - so make the most of what’s in the water as surf size is expected to become pretty small from Tues thru’ Thurs, along with a return to a couple of days of northerly winds (becoming very strong across the Mid North Coast on Wednesday).

We are looking at some minor activity in our trade window early next week (south of New Cal/Fiji) that should be enough to maintain small easterly energy across open beaches throughout the middle to latter part of next week, and a shallow southerly change around Thursday should whip up some small S’ly swell for south facing beaches in Northern NSW on Friday.

There’s also an interesting polar low appearing at the end of the model runs, but as a broad rule - as soon as a tropical cyclone is progged in the synoptics, confidence usually lowers considerably for long range forecasts. So anything beyond three or four days must be taken with a grain of salt.

Either way, all signs are still pointing towards some exciting developments in the Coral Sea over the coming weeks. Hopefully Monday’s outlook will have a little more confidence on specifics.