South-east Queensland and Northern NSW Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Monday 2nd April)

Best Days: Plenty of surf throughout the entire forecast period, though E'ly winds will ruin many locations north from Ballina this week (protected points your best bet). New E'ly groundswell from TC Josie (south of Fiji, not TC Iris in the Coral Sea) filling in Thurs, peaking Fri/Sat with slowly improving conditions. South from Yamba winds should be light and variable throughout much of the forecast period.  

Recap: There's been no shortage of swell this Easter, though winds have been a problem on a few coasts. It’s been light and variable across the Mid North Coast but north from Ballina we’ve seen some kind of onshore breeze at times and it hasn’t really let up across the Sunny Coast either (though, without any major strength). Anyway, the E’ly swell eased from 3-5ft to 3-4ft across SE Qld over the weekend, and down a little more today before perking up a little this afternoon. Wave heights have been smaller (from the east) as you head south from the border, but there’s also been a small southerly swell in the mix too. 

All in all, we could certainly do a lot worse. 

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This week (Apr 3rd - 6th)

The synoptic charts remain active. 

Tropical Cyclone Iris restrengthened to Cat 1 status in the Coral Sea today, though it’ll remain outside of our swell window up on the Capricorn Coast. That being said, a broad ridge lies across the Northern Tasman Sea (generating plenty of useful trade swell for us) and is feeding into TC Iris, so it’s possible you could consider the cyclone a swell source of sorts.

In fact, as TC Iris slowly strengthens and possibly tracks south over the coming days (though unlikely to enter our swell window) it will certainly influence SE Qld surf conditions, by way of a strengthening E/SE tending E’ly breeze. There’ll be plenty of surf on offer but with these winds, surface conditions will be bumpy just about everywhere with only protected points offering anything worthwhile.

Winds will become lighter as you track south from the border but I can see TC Iris extending some kind of influence down to Ballina or maybe Yamba. South from Coffs, we’ll see mainly light and variable winds for much of the week. 

There’s a series of migrating fronts below Tasmania at the moment, and they’ll generate small intermittent S’ly swells for a handful of reliable south swell magnets south of Byron. In general, not worth worrying to much about.

The main swell system to keep a track on this week is another Tropical Cyclone in our region: this time named Josie. 

TC Josie formed south-west of Fiji over the weekend, and is only Category 1 and expected to weaken. Ironically even as TC Josie eases below cyclone strength over the coming days, its surface wind field will broaden as it undergoes extra-tropical transition (it’s often the case that ‘weakening’ cyclones are often just starting to become useful from a swell generation point of view). 

Anyway, TC Josie’s developing E’ly fetch will reach maximum strength on Tuesday, as it slowly slips to the south-east, and will be poisoned outside of our swell window by Thursday or Friday. The resulting groundswell may start to show around Wednesday afternoon, though we'll see it more prominently from Thursday afternoon, building into Friday, holding into Saturday ahead of a gradual easing from Sunday onwards.

For what its worth, I think the swell models are really missing this event (esp across SE Qld), mainly due to windswell contamination from TC Iris. The wave model is combining all of the swell trains into a single source, which is overestimating surf heights during the middle of the week. It’s worth remembering that distant groundswells like TC Josie usually provide a uniform size distribution across most of Northern NSW and SE Qld (though in this case, bigger across SE Qld than locations further south, due to the fetch alignment). But that’s not the important point here: I’m trying to ascertain the longevity of the swell originating from TC Josie, which may otherwise be mistaken as a large one-day wonder. 

In this regard, the Coffs swell graph is useful because there’s little windswell contamination - and it shows surf heights holding steady from late Wednesday through Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, even Monday. 

So, if we apply this thinking to the SE Qld swell graphs, it’s easy to see that there’s quite a lot of windswell loading in the model forecasts Thursday and Friday (which settles down into Saturday and Sunday, as the local winds ease - another clue). 

Anyway, this is a long way of saying that the models are overestimating surf size for SE Qld and Far Northern NSW for this event over the coming days. Following some wind affected but otherwise surfable trade swell Tuesday and Wednesday, we should see wave heights building into the 4-5ft+ range across the open beaches through Thursday afternoon and Friday (smaller prior to then), and it’ll be smaller south across the points. Wave heights will taper off south of the border too, reaching a peak around 3-4ft+ across the Mid North Coast late in the week.

This weekend (Apr 7th - 8th)

Local windswell will ease slowly over the weekend but we’re looking at a steady, though inconsistent E’ly groundswell, easing from 4-5ft Saturday across SE Qld and Far Northern NSW’s open beaches, down a little Sunday. Surf size will be smaller running down the points, and we can expect a foot or so smaller across the Mid North Coast.

Conditions should remain favourable across the Mid North Coast with light winds and sea breezes, but despite an easing of the easterly breeze across SE Qld and Far Northern NSW, there’ll be a residual wobble through the lineup from the mid-week onshore breezes. 

As such, it’ll be protected spots once again for the best (though smaller) waves. 

Next week (Apr 9th onwards)

A dominant ridge of high pressure through the Tasman Sea next week will keep our swell sources some distance from the coast. However, we have more Tropical Cyclone activity expected in and around the Fijian region, plus a flurry of frontal systems below Tasmania that’ll generate intermittent south swells for Northern NSW. Stay tuned to Wednesday's notes for more on this.