South-east Queensland and Northern NSW Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 27th October)

Best Days: Sat: small SE swell across the Mid North Coast, much smaller to the north. Tues: possible small window of peaky N'ly swell and early SW winds. Wed/Thurs: possible solid/large S'ly swell in Northern NSW, only small in SE Qld. Wed onwards: slowly building E'ly swell, biggest Thurs/Fri though persisting into the first half of next week. 

Recap: Thursday offered nought but a strengthening northerly breeze, a late peaky windswell and a fantastic evening lightshow as a series of intense thunderstorms produced hours of crawlers across the eastern dark (jeez, that sounds a little OTT. But it was good!). Thursday’s late windswell increase produced small clean N’ly wind waves about exposed parts of the coast, with sets int he 2ft+ ranger. Winds swung NW throughout so conditions were clean but the surf eased pretty steadily from the get go, and it's now tiny.

Mid-morning N'ly windswell at D'Bah

This weekend (Oct 23 - Oct 24)

Our northerly swell source is but a distant memory, and a small low in the central Tasman Sea is not particularly strong, also aimed south of our swell window. 

Southern NSW will see a peaky SE swell through Saturday but size will ease with increasing northerly latitude from Seal Rocks, so apart from the lower Mid North Coast - which may pick up some stray 2-3ft sets on Saturday - we’re looking at very small surf elsewhere. Conditions will however be generally clean with light offshore winds and afternoon sea breezes. 

Sunday’s not looking much better. There are no new swell sources due between now and then so northern regions will remain tiny and the small SE swell expected in the far south on Saturday will become smaller into Sunday morning, before fading to nothing throughout the day. And to cap it off, winds will freshen from the north, then north-east during the day. 

Next week (Oct 25 onwards)

Monday looks terrible, with tiny surf and strengthening northerly winds. We should see a low quality afternoon windswell across exposed north facing stretches (biggest around the southern Gold/Tweed Coasts) but really, it won’t be worth any interest.

A gusty southerly change will push up the coast overnight, and depending on its timing, may allow for a period of clean conditions early Tuesday morning when winds are initially SW and exposed southern corners (AKA north facing beaches) are picking up the remnants of Monday’s N’ly windswell. 

However, this swell will be short lived and winds will quickly swing S’ly (and possibly SE) at strength. Let’s peg size around the 1-2ft mark at most north facing beaches and a few 2ft+ sets at reliable swell magnets (southern Gold/Tweed Coasts) for a few hours at best. 

Tuesday’s southerly change will be shallow, and won’t contribute much more than a junky windswell to exposed south facing beaches south of Byron - and not a lot elsewhere (and not much north of the border either). 

At the same time, a Tasman Low is expected to form east of Tasmania, and will generate a significant mid-week south swell for some parts of the East Coast.

However there’s been some major changes in the model guidance in the last few runs, resulting in a dramatic adjustment in surf potential - as an example, today’s 12Z run favoured a lot of size for Northern NSW and some good waves running down the outer SE Qld points, but the 18Z update has since focused the low into the Southern NSW coast, reducing the size potential for Northern NSW and restricting the SE Qld potential to only small waves north of the border.

As such, I’m hesitant to commit to anything concrete from this source for Wednesday onwards as we’re likely to see some more changes over the coming days (I’ll update in the comments below as more info comes to hand). But, it’s still a fair chance that Wednesday and/or Thursday will see a solid, potentially large S’ly swell move up into Northern NSW, and I’d also hedge my bets that we’ll see some good (albeit small) runners down the outer SE Qld points. 

But, that’s not all of it. 

Prior to the development of the Tasman Low on Tuesday, we’ll see a new mid-range E’ly swell develop in our eastern swell window. This will be generated by a stationary trough SE of New Caledonia and a slow moving high pressure system east of New Zealand that are about to join forces in the South Pacific over the coming days. 

This will result in a broad belt of E’ly winds north of New Zealand from this weekend onwards, and although not terribly sizeable, it’ll kick up a long lived swell event that’ll probably start to arrive sometime on Tuesday and then peak around Thursday or Friday. Set waves should manage 3-4ft from this source at its peak, sometime around the end of the week (I'll firm up the timing on Monday).

For what it’s worth, maximum surf size will probably originate from a small embedded low at the head of the fetch - just northwest of New Zealand’s North Island later Tuesday - but this is expected to be aimed more towards Southern NSW (so, we may see maximum surf size across the Mid North Coast, and slightly smaller surf north across Far Northern NSW and SE Qld).

However, the broad trailing fetch behind will linger much longer, and should supply small background E’ly swell across all coasts through next weekend and the early part of the following week. 

Have a great weekend, see you Monday!