South-east Queensland and Northern NSW Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Wednesday 13th February)

Best Days: Strong E/SE swells for the entire period, though fresh S/SE winds will be favourable only for protected locations. 

Recap: Apart from a brief window of NW winds both yesterday and today, fresh northerlies have made mincemeat of an otherwise quality E’ly swell. It’s also kicked up some N’ly windswell too. A southerly change is pushing up the coast (reaching Evans Head around 7pm NSW time) and will cross the border later this evening. This change created cleaner conditions inside southern corners across the Mid North Coast today.

This week (Feb 14 - 15)

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Gusty S/SE winds will dominate the next few days, bringing relief from this most recent heatwave. Obviously, this means only sheltered points and protected locations will offer clean conditions. 

As for surf, Thursday will start with a relative low point in the size department, in comparison for the coming week ahead. Initially we’ll see a similar level of inconsistent E’ly swell around 3-4ft at open beaches (smaller down the points) and building S/SE swell in the wake of the change that’ll be biggest across Northern NSW’s south facing beaches (choppy 3-5ft by the afternoon) though much smaller at protected spots, and in SE Qld due to the strong southerly component in the direction.

On Friday, we’ll see further increase in mid-range E/SE swell originating from a complex weather setup to our east. Essentially, we’ve got a broad gyre-scale atmospheric circulation encompassing all three basins as a slow moving monsoon trough moves across the tropics, containing an embedded tropical cyclone (TC Oma) and two tropical lows (92P, 93P).

TC Oma is out of our swell window, and the two tropical lows - whilst retrograding nicely to the west within our swell window - are only small in diameter and fetch length. So their actual surf potential isn’t especially high. 

As such, the best swell potential will occur as the broad scale system interacts with a Tasman high pressure system (initially the post-southerly change ridge that’ll push into the Qld coast Thursday), forming a broad, stationary SE fetch aimed into the Coral Sea. 

Now, while the synoptic look insane, this fetch is not actually very well aligned for our region. However its slow moving characteristic will be favourable for a steady spread of sideband E/SE swell from Friday through the weekend and beyond. Ordinarily a short lived fetch of this nature would be worth less size, but because it's slow moving, I'm going to bump up estimates a bit.

Surf size should increase throughout the day and should reach 5-6ft at exposed beaches, mainly centred around the Far Northern NSW coast. Because of the fetch orientation relative to the Gold and Sunshine Coasts, only the exposed northern ends of these regions will see anywhere close to the upper end of this size range (and they’ll be very wind affected). Outer SE Qld points will be smaller, building to 3-5ft during the afternoon though starting out smaller. 

Expect smaller surf as you head south from about Ballina or Yamba, and wave heights will be marginally smaller across protected locations here too. Local winds will also decrease in strength with increasing southerly latitude, but its unlikely we’ll see topographically influenced local regions of lighter morning SW winds through this time frame, as the synoptic drivers look too strong (only local that may see this would be the southern Gold Coast). 

As a side note, there’ll be a small long period S’ly swell in the mix across Northern NSW coasts from late Thursday through Friday but you probably won’t notice it much. It will have originated form the parent low to today’s southerly change, positioned below Tasmania yesterday. 

This weekend (Feb 16 - 17)

It’s a fairly steady forecast for the region. The broad ridge between the Tasman high and the tropical developments around Vanuatu/Fiji/New Caledonia will remain strong and robust, albeit not optimally aligned for our coasts. 

If anything, a slight strengthening is expected early Saturday morning which suggests a minor peak in size very late Saturday or more likely early Sunday, but with the synoptic wind holding out of the S/SE it’ll be protected points only. 

Let’s aim for a similar size range as per Friday afternoon for much of the weekend (5-6ft exposed beaches in Northern NSW and the northern ends of the Gold/Sunshine Coasts, but 3-5ft across the outer points), with the very late Sat/early Sun pulse pushing a foot or so above that. Expect slightly smaller surf south from Yamba. 

Winds will throttle back on Sunday as the Tasman high moves eastwards and changes its configuration. This may bring a reasonable period of SW winds to the Southern Gold Coast but not many other areas in SE Qld and Far Northern NSW. However, we should see much lighter winds across the Mid North Coast on Sunday. Perhaps not enough to allow open beaches and exposed reefs to clean up properly, but it’ll be noticeable. 

In addition to that we’ll also see some small underlying southerly groundswell across the Northern NSW coast from poorly aligned fronts south of Tasmania, but again, it’ll be impossible to discern beneath the short range energy. 

Next week (Feb 18 onwards)

There’s some pretty exciting model progs for the Coral Sea and South Pacific next week, though they’re still not consolidating very well between model runs. In particular there’s a chance that TC Oma will become a Severe Tropical Cyclone within the Coral Sea mid-next week, but it’s too early to tell if it’ll favour our region at all for major size potential. 

As a bare minimum, the ridge through the northern Tasman Sea into the Coral Sea looks like it’ll remain in place, so although we’ll see a slight decrease in size through the start of next week from Sunday morning’s pulse, we should see strong E/SE swell for at least two or three days, holding 4-6ft across exposed coasts north from Ballina, smaller running down the points. Moderate winds will hold out of the SE across SE Qld and Far Northern NSW but variable conditions are expected across the Mid North Coast. 

There is certainly a chance that TC Oma could swing through our swell window in a manner that results in very large wave heights. At this stage TC Oma’s north-eastern flank probably won’t push past the swell shadow of New Caledonia until early Monday, so any E/NE or NE swell potential won’t become a reality until Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday. Of course, if TC Oma then tracks south it’ll push closer to the region which significantly enhances size prospects, albeit with an increased chance of stronger winds. 

Anyway, it’s all very dynamic, and the take home message is simple: there’s no shortage of strong surf ahead, and we’ve finally got an extended period of favourable winds (and swell!) for the protected points. So get in and amongst it!