South-east Queensland and Northern NSW Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Wednesday 19th March)

Best Days: Most days should see OK waves across the outer points in SE Qld and Far Northern NSW, they'll be the only option under a SE breeze. 

Recap: Slowly easing E’ly groundswells were accompanied by an earlier-than-expected freshening SE breeze on Tuesday as a ridge builds across the coast. This trend has contnued into today. The mornings have seen periods of SW winds with clean conditions. Winds are lighter in the south than in the north. A small trade swell is now building across SE Qld. 

This week (Apr 20 - 21)

Our extended run of E’ly grounswell will continue to slowly ease throughout the rest of the week.

Most swell events are usually up and down over the space of a day or two, but this particular one is unusual - it arrived on Saturday and has provided fun waves for the last five days, and in total should extend out to almost seven or eight days of rideable energy (interestingly, the early stages of the weather system that generated this swell was first mentioned in these Forecaster Notes as far back as Monday, 3 April - sixteen days ago). It's rare to see lengthy runs of easterly swell from distant South Pacific systems, and even more rare for these swells to coincide with a long spell of favourable conditions.

This is a moot point though, as moderate to fresh SE winds will create bumpy conditions across most beaches over the coming days. Winds will continue to remain a little lighter across the Mid North Coast but it certainly won’t be a patch on the Easter winds. 

However, this freshening trade flow will generate a building short range E/SE swell for the SE Qld and Far Northern NSW coasts. The Sunshine Coast's open beaches should increase up towards 3-4ft by late Thursday or early Friday, with 3ft+ surf at exposed parts of the Gold and Tweed Coasts and 2-3ft surf through the Ballina Shire. Expect smaller surf from this source south of here. And with winds out of the SE, the outer points will be your only real option for a reasonable quality wave.

This weekend (Apr 22 - 23)

The trades are expected to slowly weaken from Friday onwards which will result in a gradual downwards trend in the size department into the weekend.

Model guidance has a minor increase in swell period (and consequently, our surf height forecast across SE Qld increases marginally late Sat and early Sun - see chart below) but I’m not confident on the source of this and am more inclined to think that we’ll see a slight easing trend overall. Expect 3ft+ sets on the Sunny Coast on Saturday morning, 2-3ft on the Gold and Tweed Coasts and smaller surf south from Byron. By Sunday it’ll probably be a little smaller again.

The existing long range E’ly swell will also provide a very small undercurrent of energy across all coasts this weekend, but aside from the Mid North Coast (where it may be around the same size as the trade swell with 2ft sets) it’ll largely go undetected.

Winds will remain SE across all coasts this weekend but they’ll ease as the synoptic pattern weakens, which should bring about a reasonable period of SW winds in the mornings. The only location that may not quite see these early morning benefits is the Sunshine Coast, owing to its northern location and thus closer proximity to the trade flow.

Next week (Apr 24 onwards)

A deepening surface trough south of Fiji on Friday is expected to form a nice easterly dip over the weekend. At the moment it’s expected to slowly consolidate into a decent swell producing system by Sunday or Monday, however by this time it’ll start to push close to the swell shadow of New Zealand’s North Island. So this is a concern, which will require close scrutiny in Friday's notes.

Anyway, current expectations are for a new E’ly swell to arrive in a couple of stages - a small renewal of energy later Tuesday ahead of a more robust push in size through Wednesday and Thursday, where set waves could push up into the 3ft+ range. 

Otherwise, the Southern Ocean storm track looks generally unfavourable for much of the period, with just a slight tilt towards the Tasman Sea early next week, which should supply some small long range S’ly energy for Northern NSW building from later Wednesday (Mid North Coast) into Thursday (Far North Coast). No major size is currently expected though, maybe some 3ft sets at south swell magnets.