South-east Queensland and Northern NSW Surf Forecast by Craig Brokensha (issued Friday 26th April)

Best Days: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings south magnets

Recap

Good to great waves on the exposed beaches with favourable winds each morning and a slow easing in swell. Still 3ft+ across magnets this morning but mostly 2-3ft.

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

This weekend and next week (Apr 27 – May 3)

These notes will be brief-ish as Ben’s away on holidays.

The easterly trade-swell will continue to ease into the weekend across the Gold Coast, dropping to a small 2ft on the sets though persisting through until mid-next week while becoming less consistent.

On the Mid North Coast and North Coast we'll see a vigorous cold front pushing up the southern NSW coast bringing a building and weak S'ly windswell tomorrow. Late in the day on the MNC we'll likely see some stronger period S'ly swell from a fetch of W/SW gales exiting eastern Bass Strait.

Size wise south facing beaches may see junky 3ft sets tomorrow afternoon but with moderate to fresh S/SW tending S/SE winds (possibly more SW at dawn in some locations).

The mid-period swell should offer better waves across south magnets on Sunday with 3-5ft sets likely, easing temporarily through the day ahead of a new S'ly groundswell later in the day but more so Monday from stronger SW gales south of Tassie. It should be noted all other locations will be much smaller in size and we may see some regions missing out on these tricky directional swells.

Winds will great for these south magnets Sunday morning and offshore from the W/NW, fresh out of the NE into the afternoon, though a late S'ly change is likely on the Mid North Coast.

Come Monday, sets should be hanging in at 3-4ft across south facing beaches, though another strong front pushing up through the Tasman Sea Sunday should provide a touch more size later in the day and early Tuesday to possibly 3-5ft.

Winds on Monday morning should be favourable W/SW, freshening from the S/SE through the day, with Tuesday clean again with a W/SW offshore ahead of E/NE sea breezes.

The Gold Coast will fail to see much size at all from these southerly pulses with it hanging in at 1-2ft, a bit better across the regional south magnets.

The S'ly swell will fade on the North Coast Wednesday with light morning offshore winds.

As this swell fades new levels of E'ly trade-swell should start to build across the region as a strong high moves into the Tasman Sea and then across New Zealand mid-week.

We'll see a broad and strong fetch of E/SE trades stretching out from Queensland to the back of New Zealand, with a possible low deepening east of the North Island later next week.

This is a long way down the track but in any case we'll see the surf increase from the east later week, reaching 3-4ft or so next Friday/Saturday. Also to our south we may see a broad and significant Tasman Low developing, generating large windy S'ly swell but we'll have to review all of this on Monday. Have a great weekend!