South-east Queensland and Northern NSW Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Friday 20th September)

Best Days: Sat/Sun/Mon: plenty of trade swell though local winds will be an issue, especially south from Yamba. Tues/Wed: slim chance for a sneaky E/SE swell in SE Qld. Thurs/Fri: decent S/SE swell south of Byron.

Recap: Thursday delivered easing SE swell across Northern NSW with 4-5ft sets across the Mid North Coast and 2-3ft sets in the Far North. Wave heights remain very small in SE Qld away from the Gold Coast’s south swell magnets. Today’s seen a mix of building trade swell, mainly in northern NSW (much of SE Qld has remained small) plus some long period S’ly energy from a deep low below the continent earlier in the week, which also produced large waves in Tasmania Wed/Thurs (see today’s WOTD). We’ve seen occasional 3ft+ sets across some exposed beaches south of the border, mainly those facing towards the south, and early light winds created clean conditions ahead of developing sea breezes.

Fun mix of swells at D'Bah late Friday morning

But not much energy on the northern Gold Coast

This weekend (Sep 21 - 22)

Northerly winds will create problems all weekend, especially across the Mid North Coast where they’ll be at their strongest. 

This is a shame as we’re looking at building trade swells all weekend, from 2-3ft early Saturday to 3-4ft by Sunday afternoon (surf size will be largest across SE Qld and Far Northern NSW, a little smaller south from Yamba). 

Today’s infrequent S’ly swell will be on the way out so don’t expect much leftover energy from today. 

Local winds won’t become too strong in SE Qld and early Saturday morning should see a period of light N/NW winds, so there’ll be options at exposed northern ends and south facing beaches, otherwise expect conditions to become wind affected across most coasts at some point. The Mid North Coast could see 20kts or more at times so only sheltered locations will be workable south from Ballina or Yamba.

Next week (Sep 23 onwards)

The weekend’s trade swell will ease slowly from Monday, though local winds look tricky as a trough moves up the coast, delivering a staggered S’ly change to Northern NSW from about lunchtime onwards. Ahead of the change, we’ll see N’ly tending NW winds so some exposed coasts may retain some surface wobble, but we’ll probably see conditions improve through the day - mainly at northern ends, don’t expect anything worthwhile on the points until the S’ly pushes through, which may not be until Tuesday in the Far North. 

Exposed spots in Far Northern NSW and SE Qld may see some early 3-4ft sets but it’ll be down to 2-3ft during the day, and surf size will be smaller south of Yamba. A further small decrease will occur into Tuesday. 

A weak low will form off the Southern NSW coast on Monday but it still doesn’t look like it’ll display any swell generating characteristics for our coast. So, I'm not expecting any surf from it. 

Additionally, a small but intense low forming south of Tasmania on Sunday - associated with the trough responsible for Sunday’s disruption of the NE breeze - may kick up a brief flush of small S’ly swell early next week (Tuesday). The low looks impressive on the synoptics with up to 40kts around its core, but it’s expected to be very small in size and will travel unfavourably E/SE through our swell window. Therefore I don’t think there’ll be much more than a stray foot or two at south facing beaches south of Byron.

Lastly, an impressive but poorly aligned low developing east of New Zealand over the weekend (see below) looks well and truly out of our swell window on the synoptics. However, there's a brief, interesting intensification and N/NW push slated for Saturday as core winds reach 40kts+, so we can’t rule out some stray E/SE swell glancing exposed locations at the top of our region (i.e. the Sunshine Coast) late Tuesday or Wednesday. It’s a low probability event but I’ll monitor the synoptics over the next few days to see if there’s any potential worth looking further into. 

Monday afternoon’s S’ly change into Northern NSW will reach SE Qld on Tuesday but we’re only expecting a short lived swing in the wind to the southern quadrant, with troughy, variable conditions expected for the rest of the week. 

A series of fronts will then track through the lower Tasman Sea from Tuesday onwards (see below), and so the second half of the week will see slowly growing sideband S/SE swell, mainly across Northern NSW. 

In fact, the strength length and width of the fronts pushing into Southern New Zealand around Wednesday look pretty impressive, so later Thursday and Friday should see some reasonably solid swell on offer, possibly up towards 3-5ft at south swell magnets south of Byron.

I’ll have more on this in Monday’s update. Have a great weekend!