South-east Queensland and Northern NSW Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Monday 4th February)

Best Days: Fun E'ly swell all week, pulsing Thurs/Fri, easing temporarily Sat/Sun, ahead of a large E'ly swell late Sun/Mon/Tues. 

Recap: The weekend delivered building easterly swells from two sources. Given the three-plus-week round of peaky easterly swell through the Christmas/New Year period, followed by a couple weeks of small, lacklustre surf into the end of January, some may have even called it a timely resumption of the endless easterly swell machine. In any case, there were two seperate sources of energy - a small ridge through the central southern Tasman Sea, which delivered 3-4ft+ surf across the Mid North Coast on Saturday, easing into Sunday. The second source was a ridge through the Coral Sea, which was slow to build surf size on Saturday (as expected) but reached 3-4ft across most SE Qld and Far Northern NSW coasts into Sunday, holding in and around this size range today. Winds have been generally moderate onshore in the north with pockets of light variable winds at times, whilst the Mid North Coast saw light morning winds and moderate (Sat/Sun) to fresh (Mon) afternoon NE sea breezes. 

Plenty of E'ly swell at Burleigh this arvo

This week (Feb 5 - 8)

Today’s Forecaster Notes are brought to you by Rip Curl

I’ve just finished the Southern NSW Forecast Notes, and I thought you’d be interested to note that over the next four days, there are eight possible individual swell sources on the cards for that region, only one of which is likely to exceed two feet.

Fortunately, the outlook for our region is a little more straightforward. But before we get to the primary swell source, let’s discuss the peripherals, as there are a few.

First up: model guidance has a small long period S’ly swell pegged for Northern NSW on Tuesday and Wednesday though it’s only small, and Southern NSW doesn’t seem to have picked up much energy yet.  So right now so I’m not holding out hope for anything worthwhile.

Another strong front is passing below Tasmania today though it’s poorly aligned for our region so we won’t see much size, just a foot or two of southerly swell glancing the exposed Northern NSW coast through the middle of the week. 

A small ridge will develop east of Bass Strait on Tuesday, but remain south of about Ulladulla’s latitude. This means the most size we’ll see from this source will be found across the Far South of NSW, with smaller surf as you head north. The Lower Mid North Coast may pick up a few 1-2ft waves on Wednesday but it’s not worth worrying about. 

Model guidance has slightly cooled on the long period S/SE swell for Wednesday (mentioned in Friday’s notes), and the weekend’s satellite passes didn’t pick up anything worthwhile either. It’s clutching on 0.5m at 13.1 seconds on Thursday but again, I think this will be too small and too inconsistent to be noticeable above the dominant trade swell regime. However, let's wait and see if anything materialises in Southern NSW on Wednesday. 

And lastly, a small but strong E’ly fetch will develop west of Cook Strait (the body of water separating New Zealand’s North and South Islands) on Wednesday afternoon. Unfortunately the fetch length is expected to be very short, and it’ll be mainly aimed into Southern NSW, but it’s plausible that we’ll see a small pulse of E’ly swell from this region later Friday across the Mid North Coast. Truth be told, it’ll be impossible to discern from the primary trade swell anyway. 

So, moving right along - and our main source of swell this week is a stationary ridge through the Coral Sea. It’s already providing us with inconsistent 3-4ft sets, and this provides a useful datum for the rest of the week. 

Right now the fetch isn’t particularly well consolidated, which means that the surf isn’t as strong as we normally expect (for a trade swell), and it’ll tend to offer alternating periods of both consistent and very inconsistent surf. So, what you see early morning could be much different from what’s on offer mid morning, or lunchtime - even though the broad swell trend is expected to remain almost linear for the next few days. 

On Wednesday, this trade flow is expected to strengthen a little more, and broaden in width, bringing about an increase in size through Thursday and Friday. At this stage I’m expecting Tuesday and Wednesday rto hold somewhere between 3ft and maybe 3-4ft at exposed beaches (smaller running down the points) but Thursday and Friday should push a foot higher the this. Expect slightly smaller surf south from about Coffs Harbour. 

Local winds look OK for the points. The Coral Sea ridge will push up against the coast, creating moderate E/SE winds for the most part (north of Ballina through to the Sunshine Coast) but there’ll be isolated pockets of light variable winds at times (mainly southern Gold Coast etc as per usual). Obviously, without the presence of a synoptic offshore, conditions won’t be perfectly clean but there’l be some nice waves on offer regardless. 

Unfortunately, the Sunshine Coast - being closest geographically to the ridge - has less chance of seeing favourable winds so you’ll have to work around the tides at protected spots. 

Across the Mid North Coast, winds will be more light and variable in the mornings, with afternoon sea breezes. 

Friday is the only day that present a different synoptic opportunity, with the Coral Sea ridge weakening, allowing local winds to become light and variable (with sea breezes) across SE Qld and most of Northern NSW. At the same time, a shallow trough approaching southern NSW will temporarily strengthening N’ly winds about the Lower Mid North Coast, mainly in the afternoon.  

This weekend (Feb 9 - 10)

The weekend looks pretty good, though there is a risk of N’ly winds across SE Qld and Far Northern NSW later Saturday and into Sunday as a surface trough approaches from the west. Current model guidance suggests this may not influence the Mid North Coast qiuite as much, but it’s early days yet. Prior to this winds should be light and variable Saturday morning.

As for surf, we’re looking at persistent E’ly trade swells though the increase expected Thurs/Fri may ease slightly throughout Saturday and into Sunday morning. I’ll peg size around 3-5ft at open beaches early Saturday (smaller along the points etc), easing throughout the day and levelling around 3ft Sunday morning.

However, later this week, the tail end of the trade flow is expected to become somewhat supercharged as a series of tropical lows (and possible tropical cyclones) feed in from the north. This will create a bigger round of longer period E’ly swell swell arriving some point on Sunday afternoon, peaking into the start of the new week. 

At this stage it’s quite possibly that late Sunday could see a push in size to 4-5ft, maybe even the 4-6ft range, though Monday is a safer bet at this stage. Let’s wait and see how Wednesday’s model runs are handling things. 

Next week (Feb 11 onwards)

The South Pacific synoptic charts look very juicy as a strong passage of intense tropical storms push southwards through the waters between Samoa and Fiji, enroute to New Zealand (which is gonna cop one heck of a run of very large N, NE and E/NE swell from this weekend onwards).

The main concern I have at this stage is that as these systems consolidate into a single sub tropical low (see chart below), they’ll eventually move in behind the swell shadow of New Zealand. As such, most of our surf potential will be reliant on an impressive number of very strong but not optimally consolidated fetches moving perpendicular through the swell window. Being located quite some distance from the mainland, we have to be cautious as to its potential.

Anyway, right now I think we’re looking at two or three days (Mon/Tues/Wed) seeing solid E/NE swell in the 3-5ft range at exposed beaches, with the early stages of this event - around Monday or early Tuesday -seeing bigger surf around 4-6ft+ at exposed spots. 

Unfortunately, local winds do look iffy out of the north on Monday but it’s a long time away in model land, so we’ll take a close inspection on Wednesday.