South-east Queensland and Northern NSW Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Wednesday 26th March)

Best Days: No great days in SE Qld due to the swell direction. Plenty of size building across Northern NSW but local winds look tricky. Maybe early Sunday for the best combo of winds and easing south swell.

Recap: Our expected E'ly groundswell delivered great waves through Tuesday and this morning across most beaches. Winds were light for most of Tuesday except across the Mid North Coast where they freshened from the north in the afternoon. Today we’ve seen NW winds in most areas though a few locations (such as Byron) recorded moderate N’lies which has confined the best waves to sheltered northern corners. Size has been anywhere between 3ft and occasionally 4ft. Wave heights are now easing.

East swell at Coolum this morning

This week (Apr 27 - 28)

Today’s E’ly swell will ease steadily into Thursday so despite the presence of offshore winds across much of the region, there’s not likely to be a lot of quality surf on offer. The waves we have right now are inconsistent and with even less size by tomorrow, it’ll be a challenge to find anywhere as the swell continues to back off. 

And that’s essentially it from our eastern swell window for the time being. A series of fronts will dominate the entire forecast period, and thus we’re looking at an extended period of south swell for the region.

This means we are also looking at a lengthy period of very small surf throughout SE Qld due to the swell source and direction.

The first front will be associated with a Tasman Low developing east from the Far South Coast this evening. It will drive S’ly gales parallel to the coast overnight tonight and will subsequently generate a solid south swell for late Thursday (Mid North Coast) and early Friday (remainder of Northern NSW).

However, the strongest winds associated with this system will be located very close to the Southern NSW coast, generally inside the swell shadow of the Hunter curve. Whilst our models are estimating a lot of size into Friday (for example, 6-8ft south facing beaches around Coffs), I am now of the opinion that the models are overestimating the eventual surf size due to the local contamination of short range windswell (which won’t contribute much size in the surf zone). 

I also think that we may see the peak of the swell cycle much earlier than the models are predicting (it estimates large waves across the Coffs region all day Friday, whilst I think the peak will occur here in the early hours of Friday morning). 

In contrast, a secondary front will provide a larger swell for Southern NSW on Friday - but the fetch generating this pulse is expected to nose into the Hunter region and remain generally outside of our swell window. So we can’t completely rule out the prospects of large waves across Northern NSW for all of Friday, but the point is - the models are very flukey with the swell sources located so close to the mainland. So I’ll update in the comments below as more data comes to hand.

In summary for the next few days - expect building S’ly swell throughout Thursday, starting from a small base - of which this initial period of small surf will be more drawn out across the northern region (due to the swell approaching from the south). By late afternoon we should start to see 4-6ft sets at south swell magnets across the Mid North Coast, reaching the Far North Coast overnight but then easing through Friday (levelling out around 3-5ft with a building short range S’ly swell behind the next front). 

These exposed locations will be hammered by fresh and gusty S/SW winds, so the only surfable locations will be sheltered spots - and the acute southerly direction (actually, more S/SW than anything) will exaggerate the range in wave heights across the coast. So they'll be much smaller.

As for SE Qld, winds will be great for the outer points but I’d be surprised to see much more than 1-2ft here from very late Thursday into Friday morning (though, early Thursday morning could see early offshore winds and a stray 1-2ft+ sets from the tail end of the easing E’ly swell).

As the south swell reaches a peak early Friday, exposed northern ends across SE Qld could see occasional 3ft sets but they’ll be very wind affected.

All in all, not a great period to be chasing waves. 

This weekend (Apr 29 - 30)

Nothing great expected this weekend.

Saturday will see easing short range S’ly swells from Friday (4ft south facing beaches south of Byron early morning, smaller elsewhere, 1ft to maybe 1-2ft across the SE Qld coasts), and a small reinforcing pulse for Sunday has been downgraded a little. 

This should rebuild to size back up into the 4ft range across south facing beaches south of Byron, but it’ll remain smaller elsewhere and tiny across SE Qld due to the swell direction. 

Winds will remain out of the southern quadrant all weekend. There’s a slim chance for isolated pockets of SW winds early Saturday morning, and a slightly better/longer chance Sunday morning, but without any major size in the surf department, those location offering the cleanest conditions will be pretty small.

Let’s revise on Friday to see if there’s been an improvement. 

Next week (May 1 onwards)

The models have cooled on the strength of the parent low to the weekend’s front, so Monday’s renewal of south swell has disappeared and we’re looking at slowly easing S’ly swell to start the new week. South facing beaches south of Byron may rake in some early 3-4ft sets but it’ll otherwise trend down throughout the day and into the middle of the week. 

Expect very small surf to continue across SE Qld for the foreseeable future.

Another potential cold outbreak is then expected across the SE corner of the country around Tues/Wed, and a series of strong southerly swells from several regions of our south swell window will fill in across Northern NSW from about Thursday onwards - some long period energy from a polar low S/SW of Tasmania on Sunday and Monday, plus some strong short range S’ly swell from a new Tasman Low forming off the South Coast mid-week. 

As such, the second half of next week is looking very strong out of the south across Northern NSW but it’s quite likely that we won’t see much, if any sizeable swell in SE Qld for quite some time.

More on this in Friday’s update.