South-east Queensland and Northern NSW Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 28th December)

Best Days: Entire period: stacks of trade swell, biggest Mon/Tues in SE Qld (smaller to the south). Long term: heightened cyclone swell potential. 

Recap: Easing E/SE swell provided fun waves on Thursday across Northern NSW, though surf size became very small in SE Qld away from the south swell magnets. Today we’ve seen a gradual increase in trade swell, with the Gold and Sunshine Coasts now pushing 2-3ft. Winds have been mainly light to moderate onshore across much of SE Qld down to about Yamba, with fresh NE winds across the Mid North Coast. 

Trade swell just starting to increase across the Sunshine Coast, with small peelers at Noosa

This weekend (Dec 29 - 30)

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There's no change to the weekend forecast. 

Winds will remain much the same as they have been today, that is light to moderate onshore across SE Qld and Far Northern NSW, with moderate to fresh NNE winds developing across much of the Mid North Coast, up to about Yamba or thereabouts. 

Periods of light variable winds are likely across most coasts early morning, though some locations south of Yamba may dip out because of the stronger synoptic influence there. Bear in mind too that even with light varibale conditions, without a proper offshore breeze there will still be a residual wobble through the lineup at most beaches.

A broad ridge through the Coral Sea is stretching way out into the South Pacific, and will generate E’ly trade swells that’ll increase in size on Saturday ahead of a peak in size on Sunday, holding into Monday. Wave heights should push 3-5ft across exposed Sunshine Coast beaches (smaller along the points) at the height of the swell on Sunday (smaller Saturday), reaching 3-4ft+ on the Gold and Tweed Coasts, and then slightly smaller surf as you head down to the Mid North Coast (3ft+).

So, there’ll be waves all weekend - just aim for the mornings for the best conditions, and Sunday for the most size. 

Next week (Dec 31 onwards)

The broad ridge through the Coral Sea and South Pacific will ease back in strength early next week, but with the fetch reaching maturity on Sunday to the NE of New Zealand, this means we’ll see easterly swells persisting through much of next week.

However, as this fetch will be further away from the mainland, it’ll offer less consistent surf than the Sun/Mon peak - but it will however offer a more uniform size distribution across all coasts. 

Wave heights should maintain Sunday’s size into Monday, but will then gradually ease from Tuesday thru’ Friday. That being said I’d be surprised if the open beaches of SE Qld and Far Northern NSW dropped below 3ft all next week. 

As for conditions, the weekend's light variable tending moderate onshore pattern across SE Qld and Far Northern NSW is expected to persist for most of the week, whilst the weekend's fresh N/NE breezes on the Mid North Coast will also hold through until about Wednesday or Thursday. So, no change in the overall wind regime for quite some time.

Also worth mentioning (as you’ll see it on the synoptics, as per the image below), a southward migrating tropical low well SE of Fiji on Sunday will intensify into the new week, but detatch itself from the trade flow so the resulting fetch - despite being stronger than the weekend's trade flow - will ultimately be a shorter, single source, and the swell energy will have much further to travel (which will erode wave heights). But we'll see this energy arrive later in the week and into next weekend, and should maintain extremely inconsistent but fun 2-3ft surf at open beaches. 

Current model projections have this low then undergoing a significant extra topical development even further to the southeast over the following days, though it’s a long time away and also an extremely large travel distance that the resulting swell will need to transit. Certainly worth watching but given the modelled activity closer to home around that time frame, it may not be a dominant swell event for us. 

As for other swell sources, a large Southern Ocean low will pass south of Tasmania on Tues/Wed, and although poorly aligned, will generate a small long period southerly swell around Friday for Northern NSW south swell magnets. 

But of course, this pales in comparison to the Tropical Coral Sea and South Pacific forecasts.

As discussed earlier this week, an active phase of the MJO across the top end is firming up the model outlook for next week, and jeez there’s a lot of activity expected in that next of the woods - you really wouldn’t want to be travelling anywhere across this region for the next few weeks, as it’s likely we’re going to see at least one or two Tropical Cyclones, possibly more, and based on current model guidance, one of ‘em could potentially be Cat 4 or Cat 5. 

Of course, this doesn’t necessarily have a direct bearing on our swell potential. It’s still early days, and if these systems develop a SE track they won’t generate much surf for us at all. But with such a hive of activity across this broad region, it’s very likely that we’ll see some solid cyclone swell for some parts of the East Coast. 

Initially, we are looking at the possibility of unusual northerly groundswells throughout exposed parts of SE Qld later next week and into the weekend (this is a low confidence event though). 

Otherwise, I’ll be on high alert monitoring potential north-east and easterly cyclone swells for the entire East Coast from the following week onwards. 

Have a great weekend, see you Monday!