South-east Queensland and Northern NSW Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 7th December)

Best Days: Tues/Wed AM: easing E'ly swell, early light winds. 

Recap: No shortage of trade swell over the weekend, with size around 3-5ft most days from SE Qld into Far Northern NSW (smaller to the south), and although wind have been generally onshore, they haven’t been too strong at most coasts, so there have been plenty of workable options down the points (this morning delivered light offshores in some regions). Size is now easing.

Stacks of swell at Currumbin this morning

This week (Dec 11 - 14 onwards)

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A stationary synoptic pattern across the the Tasman Sea will deliver mixed results in the surf department over the coming days. 

In fact, from Wednesday afternoon onwards we’re looking at freshening N’ly winds that will hold at strength through Thursday, Friday and Saturday across the SE Qld region (easing slightly into Sunday), but persisting through Sunday and Monday across the Mid North Coast. 

With model projections of up to 25-30kts (in the south), likely wind gusts will be even stronger so it’s going to be difficult to find anything of value.

Therefore, make the most of Tuesday and early Wednesday as we’ll see mainly light variable winds across most regions. The current E’ly trade swell is abating slowly; expect 3-4ft sets on Tuesday to ease to 2-3ft by Wednesday, with smaller surf at protected locations/points, and also south from Yamba. 

Before we get into the main synoptic even of the forecast period - a large, slow moving trough over the eastern states - it’s worth pointing out that a small low will form in the central/southern Tasman Sea on Tuesday. 

Initially, it’ll be poorly aligned within our swell window, but will gradually strengthen and rotate its primary fetch counter-clockwise into Tuesday and Wednesday, and it looks like we’ll see a small S/SE tending SE swell from this source across Northern NSW from later Thursday into Friday. 

I doubt we’ll see much size or strength from this source but slow, inconsistent 2-3ft sets can’t be ruled out at reliable south swell magnets south of Byron.

However, local winds will create issues. At the same time, strengthening N’ly winds will generate solid (by the end of the week) N’ly windswells as the aforementioned slow moving trough approaches the eastern states (from the south).

This is a very tricky swell source as the trough is expected to be quite broad and may infact push out over the coast - most likely the Mid North Coast, rather than the Far North and SE Qld coasts - resulting in coastal NW winds at some point on Friday. I’m not especially confident on this scenario right now though; local troughs are notoriously fickle, so let’s take a closer look on Wednesday.

For now, anticipate difficult, wind affected conditions to finish the working week.

As a side note, there are a couple of impresive systems way out in the South Pacific at the moment, but they're poorly aligned - and with the poor local wind forecast for a large percentage of the forecast period, it's not worth looking into.

This weekend (Dec 15 - 16)

The weekend outlook is very similar to that of Thursday and Friday. And that is: a lot of northerly wind, and a lot of northerly windswell.

Wave heights could easily reach 4ft+ at some exposed locations, though being locally generated, won’t have a lot of quality. Again, there is chance that some regions could experience window of NW winds, but they’ll be far and few between (and more likely south from Yamba than north). 

Let’s take another pass on Wednesday. 

Next week (Dec 17 onwards)

The surf outlook for early next week is contingent on how the weekend plays out. At this stage we’ll probably be on the backside of the weekend’s event, but Monday’s (decreasing) size will be steered by how much size eventuates Sunday, and so on. However it’s likely that conditions will remain northerly-affected for a few days early in the week.

We also have a chance that ex-TC Owen (currently tracking towards the Gulf of Carpentaria) could be steered back into the Qld region and make a beeline for our swell window early-mid next week. It is however impossible to assess its surf potential at such an early stage. 

Elsewhere, and the second half of next week remains very promising from other sources.

We are likely to see a strong return southerly swell from the western flank of the slow moving trough (mainly across Northern NSW), and the trades are also expected to redevelop north of New Zealand over the weekend, leading to a building E’lly trend from Tuesday or Wednesday onwards, likely holding through into the following weekend.

More on that in Wednesday’s update.