South-east Queensland and Northern NSW Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 14th December)

Best Days: Sat/Sun: chance for lighter winds on the Sunny Coast with building NE swells, though still unlikely to be anything amazing. Difficult winds elsewhere. Mon/Tues: easing NE winds in SE Qld with plenty of (average) NE swell. 

Recap: Building N’ly windswells with freshening N/NE winds. Not particularly inspiring. 

This weekend (Dec 15 - 16)

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The forecast charts look impressive with lots of sizeable surf from the NE, but in general it’s all just locally generated windswell.

The only synoptic area of interest is a weak trough off the coast of Fraser Island today that’s expected to strengthen a NE fetch in SE Qld’s short range swell window into Saturday morning (see below), that should build a more robust local weekend swell than we’ll perhaps see across Northern NSW.

However local winds will likely spoil things in most areas in SE Qld. Models have 20kts out of the N/NE on Saturday, easing slightly Sunday but it’s unlikely to be enough to create any major improvement on the surface. Anywhere south of the border will be entrenched with gusty N/NE tending NE winds all weekend.

I still think there’s an outside chance that the Sunshine Coast could see a window of respite, thanks to the aforementioned trough - not delivering a change in wind direction, but perhaps easing the cross-onshore flow more significantly than anywhere else.

But, under these kinds of complex situations anything could happen at any time, so it’s impossible to pin down a precise outlook - as we’ll probably see a wide variation in conditions across (relatively) small stretches of coast. 

Anyway, if the winds do ease back there’ll be stacks of swell for the points.. just keep your expectations low. And don’t expect anything in Northern NSW away from extremely sheltered northern corners.

Next week (Dec 17 onwards)

So, the models have essentially erased the chances of prospects of TC Owen pushing into any of our swell windows.

It’s now likely to push off the central/northern Qld coast on Sunday - sitting somewhere between Townsville and Mackay for a few days - before gradually weakening. So at this point and time we can remove it from this discussion, though, given the enormous model variations over the last few days it’d be foolish to rule it out completely. I’ll update in the comments below if things change over the weekend. 

Despite this, the weekend’s trough off Fraser Island (or thereabouts) is expected to restrengthen into Sunday afternoon (see chart below), and should kick up wave heights back across SE Qld for Monday. Local winds will remain out of the NE for several days but they will ease back significantly, leading to a general (albeit slow) improvement in conditions. We should see punchy 3-5ft surf out of the E/NE or NE at most open beaches Monday and Tuesday, easing into Wednesday.

Across Northern NSW, the N/NE airstream is expected to hold 15-20kts from Monday thru’ Thursday. So yeah, there’ll be stacks of short range swell (plus a small S/SE swell filling in on Wed/Thurs, from a small low in the southern Tasman Sea) but only the most sheltered northern corners will have workable options, and they’ll be much smaller. 

Looking elsewhere, and with this extended swell/wind event eventually easing from the middle of the week onwards, we have a few decent swell sources for the long term period too.

The small S/SE swell mentioned above will persist across Northern NSW through Friday and Saturday thanks to the small Tasman Low undertaking a short-lived stint near the southwestern tip of the South Island during the week. However, no major size is likely. 

Additionally, a broad trade flow north of New Zealand developing from Sunday, Monday and Tuesday should kick up some inconsistent but otherwise useful E’ly swell for the end of next week. Its initial stages will be unnoticeable beneath the local energy on Wednesday, but we’ll see it become the dominant swell from Thursday through Friday and Saturday with inconsistent 3ft+ sets at reliable swell magnets. 

Otherwise, the long term outlook shows the usual flukey swell sources firing up in some way shape or form (mainly in the south), so there’s no shortage of potential to look forward to as we approach the Xmas break. 

Have a great weekend, see you Monday!