South-east Queensland and Northern NSWSurf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Monday 15th October)

Best Days: Poor winds until Wed (SE Qld) however it'll remain poor all week south of Yamba; even SE Qld won't be that great either. Nothing amazing is expected in the surf department anywhere for the second half of the week as winds ease and swing slowly anti-clockwise and wave heights slowly abate. 

Recap: What a weekend! Howling onshore winds and large building surf that still seems to have yet reached a peak (though can’t be too far off). Unfortunately, conditions were poor almost everywhere - we did eventually see light SW winds across the Sunshine Coast on Sunday, but it didn’t kick in until 7pm. With the size of the swell and the predominant easterly wind direction yesterday and today, there simply haven’t been many surfable options. Far Northern NSW and SE Qld are pushing 8-10ft at exposed spots this afternoon, with 6-8ft surf elsewhere. Protected points are smaller in size.

This week (Oct 16 - 19)

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I’ve never been one to simplify a forecast when a thesis will suffice, but the fact is that the surf outlook for this week is relatively straight forward, in a broad synoptic sense anyway. 

We’ve got a strong, near stationary high in the Tasman Sea and a complex low pressure system east of the Gold Coast, that’s extending a coastal trough into Southern NSW. This is pushing strong E’ly (in the south) through SE (in the north) winds into coastal regions.

The trough will slowly weaken from Wednesday and meander through the central/northern Tasman Sea, and we’ll subsequently see easing winds through the middle to latter part of the week across SE Qld and Far Northern NSW. However, fresh E’ly winds across the Mid North Coast will tend NE on Wednesday and Thursday, and then ease slightly but remain moderate to fresh out of the north from Friday. 

What this means is that surface conditions will only improve slowly, and mainly just in the Far North and SE Qld region, from Wednesday onwards - with very little improvement expected south of Ballina.

In any case, large swells will persist into Tuesday (too big for most coasts) so you’l be better off leaving things until we see an easing in the size department and an abatement of wind speeds later this week throughout SE Qld.

It’s a real shame that this swell event has coincided with such unfavourable winds. It’s not the direction that’s the main problem, it's their sustained nature at strength - meaning we need a half day of moderate to fresh offshore winds (or a synoptic southerly flow) to iron out all of the bumps - which is unlkely for some time.

This weekend (Oct 20 - 21)

Saturday looks very ordinary with easing E’ly swells and freshening northerly winds ahead of a gusty S’ly change for Sunday.

This change will favour the outer SE Qld and Far Northern NSW points, however we’ll be down to inconsistent 2-3ft leftovers by this time, that are likely to become even smaller during the day. I'm not terribly enthusiastic about Sunday's surf potential, to be honest.

Sheltered northern corners should have some waves early Saturday under a brief NW flow but it's likely to be pretty ordinary. Let's wait and see if the models improve the outlook by Wednesday's update. 

Next week (Oct 22 onwards)

Long term model guidance is holding the unstable trough pattern across the western Tasman Sea, however this may not necessarily develop in a favourable part of our swell window. So, there’s plenty of potential for the long term but we need a few more days to pin things down.