South-east Queensland and Northern NSW Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 23rd March)

Best Days: Great waves most days across the points; low size point Tues/early Wed (though still workable). Looking pretty solid mid-late next week (onwards) too, with likely favourable conditions.

Recap: Steady mix of solid SE and E’ly swell from a couple of sources. Mainly fresh SE winds, only suitable across the points. 

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This weekend (Mar 24th - 25th)

Looks like a fun weekend of waves for the regional points. 

The current source of SE swell across Northern NSW will ease steadily over the next few days, but the ridge anchored through the northern Tasman/Lower Coral Seas will weaken only slightly, maintaining plenty of fun trade swell both days.

Additionally, we’ll see a slowly building longer period E’ly swell throughout this time frame, generated by much stronger winds at the table end of a very long fetch that stretched right out into the South Pacific earlier this week. You can see this swell across the models in the form of a slowly increasing swell period (for example, increasing from the low 9 second range today to the low 11 second range by late Saturday/early Sunday). A second SE swell is also expected across Northern NSW from a low off New Zealand's South Island Wednesday/Thursday.

Unfortunately, the model isn’t resolving the mix of easterly quadrant swells very well, so it’s hard to have complete confidence in just how much size we’ll see, but at this stage there’s really no reason to move away from my prediction earlier in the week for 3-5ft sets at open beaches and outer points (obviously, it’ll be smaller running down the points and across sheltered locations). Some exposed beaches in Northern NSW may see some larger sets on Saturday as the swell trains combine. 

The main factor both days will be the winds. Overall, SE Qld is looking pretty good with a gradually weakening onshore flow that should allow for periods of light variable winds, especially Sunday with a weak pressure gradient. 

On the other hand, a building ridge across the Mid North Coast will freshen N’ly winds on Sunday, which will create a few problems. Saturday looks a little better with light to moderate E/NE winds, possibly variable at times, though seeing we haven’t had a synoptic offshore, there’ll be plenty of wobble through the lineup at exposed beaches. 

Next week (Mar 26th onwards)

The first half of next week will otherwise see smaller but steady trade swells from a stationary fetch through the Lower Coral Sea all weekend. This should maintain 3-4ft+ sets across SE Qld on Monday, with smaller surf south from about Ballina or Yamba, around 2-3ft+. Expect a slight drop into Tuesday and early Wednesday.

However, winds will veer to the north on Monday. They won’t be too strong across SE Qld (so, the weekend’s strong but slowly easing E’ly swell combo should provide a continuation of fun waves) but across Northern NSW there’ll be issues at times. A strong front will clip Southern NSW on Monday and a trough left in its wake will then create variable conditions across Northern NSW into Tuesday and Wednesday.

We’ll also see a couple of small south swells later Tuesday and Wednesday throughout Northern NSW’s south swell magnets (south of Byron), originating from a mid-latitude low associated with Monday’s front. Initially, we’ll see a S’ly pulse Tuesday afternoon (may not reach northern locations before sunset) from a gale force W/SW fetch exiting eastern Bass Strait, followed by a second S’ly swell Wednesday from the parent low well to the SE. Sets are likely to be around the 3ft mark from these sources. 

As this is going on, we’ll see a Tropical Low or Cyclone in the Coral Sea track south from a position near New Caledonia (models have the cyclone path right over the top of NC, actually!), before it merges with a ridge to the south-east, just north of New Zealand. 

This system is expected to slowly intensify whilst remaining near-stationary, which is excellent for our long term surf prospects. 

As a side note: although the models have an initial NE fetch about the cyclone's early stages over the weekend (north of New Caledonia, west of Vanuatu), I’m pretty cautious from this swell window as it’s been an unreliable source in the past (mainly due to a plethora of shoals positioned in the middle of the swell window, that slice up the energy). As such, I’m taking the model guidance of NE swell arriving on Monday afternoon with a grain of salt (small energy around 12 seconds Monday AM, but building to 1.3m @ 9.7 seconds Tuesday AM). If the weekend’s satellite winds show anything of substance I’ll add it into the comments but at this stage I’m going to keep my expectations low from this part of the system.

So, once this cyclone (95P, will be named properly on Saturday most likely) pushes out of the shadow of New Caledonia, it’ll start to produce some really nice E/NE swell for our region that’ll arrive through the second half of the week - probably sometime Wednesday afternoon, before building through a couple of new phases through Thursday and Friday. 

Exposed beaches should increase from 4-5ft Wednesday afternoon to 5-6ft Thursday, and possibly a little more into Friday. With the swell direction slightly north of east, there should be a similar size range throughout SE Qld and across the outer points as per Northern NSW, and current indications are for mainly light winds and thus clean conditions. 

Additionally, this system is expected hold position for a few days so we should see persistent energy into next weekend too. Though, it’s too early to have confidence as to whether we’ll see the size hold, increase or decrease. 

See you Monday!