South-east Queensland and Northern NSW Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 17th November)

Best Days: Sun: average peaky E'ly swell. Mon/Tues/Wed: solid E/SE swell peaking late Mon/early Tues, though mainly onshore winds will confine the best waves to sheltered points. 

Recap: Small residual swells with light winds and sea breezes. 

Today’s Forecaster Notes are brought to you by Rip Curl 

This weekend (Nov 18th - 19th)

There’s been some moderate activity in our distant eastern swell window over the last few days, so this plus a building ridge through the Northern Tasman Sea right now will slowly build average trade swell energy across our coasts over the weekend.

No great size or strength is expected, and winds will be generally onshore (possibly light and variable for brief periods, in the mornings), but there’ll be rideable waves reaching 2ft at open beaches on Saturday and 2-3ft on Sunday. 

There may be a slight lag on this upwards trend so early Saturday may come in below expectations. Early Sunday is probably your best chance for a fun beach break, but keep your expectations low. 

Next week and beyond (Nov 20th onwards)

A large blocking high will remain in position through the Tasman Sea for much of next week, resulting in generally light variable winds across Southern NSW, but moderate E/SE winds across Northern NSW and SE Qld.

This will confine the best waves to protected points and southern corners. The ridge won’t be particularly strong, so there’s a chance for periods of light winds in the early mornings, but on the balance it’s looking a little lumpy and bumpy for open locations. 

So, I’ve been tracking the much-discussed incoming E/NE swell for two weeks now (first mentioned in these Forecaster Notes on Nov 3rd), and since then the system has upgraded and downgraded itself many times.

Now that we’re right on the cusp of formation, I’m actually not much more confident on what surf will eventuate, mainly because the primary fetch isn’t expected to consolidate very well - and the main region of swell generation will occur very close to New Zealand’s North Island (with the fetch aimed up into the Coral Sea). 

It’s worth reiterating a point I made in Wednesday’s notes: the fetch’s most direct coastal target is the Sunshine Coast. However, the coastal alignment north of the border swings back to the NNW, so swell energy from this direction arrives at a slightly obtuse angle, favouring exposed northern ends for the most size and producing slightly smaller waves across the outer points (relative to exposed beaches on an E/SE facing coast like Ballina), with even smaller surf across the protected points.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great direction for the SE Qld coast. But this swell direction usually produces the biggest surf across the Tweed and Byron coasts, and then - because of the fetch’s latitude just north of New Zealand's North Island - usually results in slightly smaller waves south from Yamba. Not much, but enough to discuss in these notes.

However there’s a reasonably healthy period of development occurring upstream right now and this will provide some useful background energy throughout the course of the event.

The timing of this swell event looks like trending upwards rapidly on Monday (though peak wave heights probably won’t be in the water early morning) before peaking late afternoon and overnight, holding into early Tuesday. Surf size will then easily steadily through Wednesday. 

Wave heights will be largest across the Far Northern NSW coast with open beaches pushing 4-6ft (Tweed, Ballina coasts), whereas open beaches and outer points across the Gold and Sunshine Coasts should see 4-5ft surf. Expect smaller waves running down the points - most likely where you'll be surfing - and into sheltered southern ends.

Surf size may also be fractionally smaller south from Yamba (compared to locations further north) but local winds will be the same, so your most likely surfing size range will be smaller across protected locations. 

Overall, it looks like a very fun E’ly swell event but certainly not epic. 

Looking beyond our mid-week east swell, and the Tasman Sea ridge will broaden later in the week, maintaining reasonable levels of trade swell as the E/SE groundswell steadily abates (say, 2-3ft across SE Qld to finish the week). 

In fact, it’s now looking like a broad trough will develop across the coast into the weekend, strengthening E’ly winds and developing a much more significant local system very close to the mainland (compared to recent/current systems). 

Model guidance is suggesting a windy 6ft short range swell for SE Qld later next weekend and early next week (even up to 6-8ft on Tuesday), which, while somewhat optimistic in the size department, seems to be a reasonably good outlook as to the likely trend. That is: very solid, with dicey conditions for a few days. But plenty of swell, which at this time of the year is always very welcome.

More on this in Monday’s update.