South-east Queensland and Northern NSW Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Monday 24th December)

Best Days: Most days should have fun waves, mainly in SE Qld and Far Northern NSW where winds will be best. An initial peak is expected very late Tues/Wed, and then Sat/Sun/Mon.

Recap: The weekend was quite a mixed bag. Small leftover E’ly swell on Saturday morning was accompanied by light winds in SE Qld and Far Northern NSW, before giving way to a gusty S’ly change that reached the Gold Coast around 3pm. Building S’ly swells in its wake created plenty of average quality surf for Sunday in the 4ft range south from Byron and although most SE Qld open beaches reached 2-3ft, the outer points barely managed slow 1-2ft sets. Size has eased slowly today though a new E/SE has filled into Northern NSW (mainly the Mid North Coast) and will build further into Xmas Day. Winds have been mainly moderate from the S thru’ SE.

A ragged assortment of swells on the Sunny Coast this morning

This week (Dec 25 - 28)

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We’ve got some fun swell inbound for the Xmas period.

A strengthening trough in the north-eastern Tasman Sea over the weekend actually formed a closed low, and it also developed a little further south than Friday’s models indicated, which has slightly tweaked the structure of its fetch. This has resulted in a slight downgrade in projected surf size for the next few days, more noticeably across the Gold and Sunshine Coasts than Northern NSW. However we still have some nice waves on the way. 
  
Overall, we’re still looking at a peak in E/SE swell through late Tuesday and early Wednesday, ahead of a slow easing trend from Wednesday afternoon onwards (the models have a smaller secondary peak of energy on Thursday but I don’t think it’ll punch higher than the late Tues/early Wed peak). If anything, expect a slight delay on the peak across SE Qld as it'll arrve earlier across more southern locations. 

Set waves should max out in the 3-4ft+ range across Northern NSW at the height of the swell, though it’ll be very inconsistent at times. Locations not fully open to the south will be smaller. 

Across SE Qld, we’ll see more SE in the swell direction, with the outer points expected to peak around 2ft+ with exposed northern ends pushing 3ft+. Expect long breaks between the bigger waves. 

Conditions look generally good through this time frame, with light winds and sea breezes from the Sunshine Coast down to about Yamba. South from Yamba to Seal Rocks, we’ll see a little more strength in the wind, but likely towards the end of the week (so, Xmas/Boxing Day should see relatively clean conditions through the morning). Wind direction will be more NE here compared to a general E’ly across SE Qld. 

As wave heights ease slowly from late Thursday through Friday, we’ll see a new swell source develop to our north - a broadening ridge through the Coral Sea, stretching way out into the South Pacific by the weekend. This looks like delivering an extended run of super fun trade swell to all coasts, and should begin an upwards trend on Friday. 

Winds will however start to freshen throughout this time period - out of the east across SE Qld and Far Northern NSW, but tending gusty NE across the Mid North Coast. We should see some workable waves to finish the week with size in the 2-3ft+ range at most SE Qld and Far Northern NSW beaches by late Friday afternoon (smaller prior to this), and a little smaller in size south from Yamba. 

This weekend (Dec 29 - 30)

A blocking pattern will maintain N/NE winds across the Mid North Coast from Saturday possibly through until the following weekend. That’s not a good look.

Fortunately, locations north from Ballina should see more of an easterly flow over the weekend, and with much less strength.

The good news is that this stationary pattern looks like generating a long-lived E’ly swell that’ll reach a peak over the weekend or early next week, around 3-5ft across SE Qld, and grading smaller with increasing southerly latitude. So there'll be stacks of weekend waves for the outer SE Qld and Northern NSW points. 
 
Next week (Dec 31 onwards)

No major changes to the long term outlook, just a continuation of steady trade swells with plenty of options for many coasts. 

More on this in Wednesday’s update.