South-east Queensland and Northern NSW Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Wednesday 3rd July)

Best Days: Sheltered points only until Sunday. Plenty of great waves next week with a sustained run of fun E'ly swell for the beachbreaks, probably holding through until the following weekend. 

Recap: Excellent surf persisted through Tuesday with generally favourable winds and strong E’ly groundswells that throttled back to 4-6ft across open beaches. Today saw similar size range, if anything a touch smaller around 4-5ft, though with deteriorating quality away from protected points under a freshening S’ly tending SE airstream (though winds were SW across many coasts early morning). 

Tuesday morning colours via Multicam

Superbank in full flight Tuesday morning

Still stacks of lines this afternoon

This week and weekend (July 4 - 7)

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

Before we start, it’s worth noting that the fetch responsible for the last two days of pumping surf is still active north of New Zealand (see synoptic analysis below, from this morning) and won’t really ease back in strength until tomorrow.

Allowing 2-3 day travel time, this means we’ll see persistent E’ly swell through into the weekend, easing slowly from early next week (though we’ll certainly be on the backside of the event by this time).

In fact, another strong high will develop way out further east - south of Tahiti (see image at bottom) - and the associated ridge will be strong enough to generate useful E’ly swells for much of next week in the 3ft range. That'll be over a fortnight of easterly swell, half of which will have been at significant size. Very unusual for mid-winter.

But I digress.

A strong high pressure system is developing in the Tasman Sea, extending a ridge into the Coral Sea. This will generate some impressive mid-range trade swell for the next few days, that'll build on top of the original E’ly groundswell, sourced from the same tropical low that generated our current event. 

The automated model forecasts are calling for a significant jump in wave heights later Thursday and through Friday and Saturday. However, the source swell models are (in my view) incorrectly combining two swell trains together - the underlying E’ly groundswell and the mid-range SE trade swell. This is slightly exaggerating the predicted ocean swell size size, though we’ll probably see windy 5-6ft+ sets at exposed spots during this time frame.

Unfortunately, local winds will veer from a gusty S/SE to the SE and then E/SE over the coming days, maybe even E’ly at points through the weekend. So unless you’ve got an adequately sheltered location, surf quality may be in short supply. Brief pockets of SW winds may occur but they'll be the exception rather than the rule. This is a sheltered-points-only period ahead.  

Sunday is when we’re expecting to see the first notable improvement in quality as the ridge relaxes, local winds ease and the swells start to fall back in size. Though there should still be 4-5ft, maybe 4-6ft of surf at exposed spots, so again, the points will be your best option. 

Next week (July 8 onwards)

A steady supply of E’ly swell will pan out most of next week, sourced from the distant high pressure ridge developing later this week out near Tahitian longitudes (see below).

No major size is expected but most open beaches should see stray 3ft, inconsistent sets all week. In fact, Monday and maybe even early Tuesday should see larger waves as the weekend’s surf slowly eases in size. 

A front is expected to cross the region around Wednesday so the local wind pattern looks to be light and variable Monday, freshening N’ly tending NW Tues, then a swing to the SW on Wednesday. Nothing looks to be a real problem at this stage though. 

The only other swell of interest is an intense polar low pushing up underneath New Zealand this weekend, that’ll generate a small to moderate but long period S/SE swell for Northern NSW. Size will build through Tuesday afternoon, and should produce 3-4ft sets at south swell magnets south of Byron, holding into Wednesday morning then easing. Exposed northern ends of the SE Qld region may also see some inconsistent 2-3ft sets from this source if we’re lucky. 

See you Friday!