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

Best Days: Mon/Tues/Wed: plenty of strong southerly swell in Northern NSW (small in SE Qld) but with tricky winds. 

Recap: We picked up some really nice waves out of the S/SE in Northern NSW on Thursday morning, with 3-4ft+ sets at south facing beaches and light winds creating clean conditions. Elsewhere was smaller and SE Qld didn’t see much size at all (away from south facing beaches and exposed northern ends), and winds freshened from the N/NE into the afternoon. Today saw the S/SE swell ease back in size, only favouring south swell magnets south of Byron, but a small E’ly swell provided occasional 1-2ft sets at most exposed beaches elsewhere, and winds have been generally light N’ly, so it’s been workable (if a little average).

Small E'ly lines at Currumbin this morning

This weekend (Dec 21 - 22)

Freshening N’ly winds are expected on Saturday. They won’t be terrible strong in SE Qld but with only small residual E’ly swell in the mix around 1-2ft, there’s not a lot to get excited about.

Northern NSW will also see small surf but there’ll be a new signal out of the south, at south swell magnets south of Byron. It’s from a flukey source that tracked under Tasmania on Thursday, and was poorly aligned within the swell window, so most beaches will miss out but a handful of spots may pick up slow 2-3ft sets if we’re lucky. 

A S’ly change will push along the Southern NSW coast later Saturday, and it should nose into the Mid North Coast early Sunday morning.

However, model guidance has it tracking only slowly northwards so at this stage we’re looking at a late morning/lunchtime arrival in Coffs, and it may only reach as far north as Ballina by late afternoon. To the north of the change, we’ll see the N’ly flow retreat overnight Saturday and into Sunday morning, so winds should be light in strength in SE Qld and Far Northern NSW, with local afternoon sea breezes.

As it is, there won’t be a lot of surf on offer.

The small slow E’ly swell should maintain inconsistent 1-2ft across most beaches, and there may be some small NE windswell across the Mid North Coast from the pre-frontal N/NE flow overnight Saturday (no major size though). A small Sly windswell will build in the lee of the change but again, it’s not expected to be very large nor very strong, and those beaches picking up the size (generally south of Coffs) will be bumpy as well. 

So keep your expectations low. 

Next week (Dec 23 onwards)

The long period southerly swell for early next week still looks incredible.

But, most of the swell will be generated in the shadow, or partial shadow of Tasmania, which means we’ll see a flukey response along the coast - and SE Qld won’t pick up much size, away from exposed south facing beaches. So, with south facing beaches (south of Byron) likely to be quite large and probably overpowered at times, it’ll be important to keep an open mind and a flexible schedule as these kinds of swells are hard to have a lot of confidence in which locations they’ll benefit. 

The responsible Southern Ocean low is an absolute beast (see below) and despite being located SW of Tasmania as it undergoes primary swell production, will be sufficiently south in latitude to favour a significant swell event. It’ll slowly move into our swell window over the weekend, but weaken at the same time, which means we’ll see smaller though better angled south swell through the back half of this event.

In any case, I’m not making any changes to Wednesday’s (and Monday’s!) forecasts. 

It also needs to be pointed out that the models are not picking up this swell at all, which is very unusual - and should probably result in my pegging back forecast expectations quite a bit. But, I'm reasonably confident that we’ll see a strong event across many parts of the East Coast. It’s just that as soon as you head north from Seal Rocks - and more so north from Coffs Harbour - the reliability on acute southerly swells diminishes exponentially. 

Anyway, we’ll see several stages of overlapping long period S’ly swell through Monday and Tuesday, and peak swell periods should top out at about 19-20 seconds, so there’ll be a lot of water moving around.

Locations that have the right bathymetry for these kinds of swells should see some very large waves, pushing 5-6ft across south facing beaches, whilst offshore bombies and a couple of south swell magnets could be even bigger at times. But elsewhere, expect much smaller surf thanks to the direction and acute source.

Across SE Qld, I’m not expecting much more than a slow, inconsistent 1-2ft across most Gold Coast beaches and outer points, though exposed northern ends and south facing beaches could pick up inconsistent 3ft+ sets. It’ll be little smaller along the Sunshine Coast too. 

We’re looking at a peak in size through late Monday and early Tuesday (earlier in the south, later in the north), before size starts to ease from Tuesday afternoon onwards. By Wednesday we’ll be well and truly on the back end of this event, with wave heights likely to be half of the late Monday peak, and continuing to drop.

Local winds still look a little tricky. 

Trailing southerly winds from Sunday’s change may linger about the Mid North Coast early Monday, before easing during the day and becoming light and variable (as they should be in Far Northern NSW and SE Qld). 

A weak, elongated trough lying parallel to the NSW coast is modelled to possibly form a small closed low (or two) along the trough line into Tuesday - bringing northerlies to many coasts during the day - and this may veer E’ly (mainly in the south) into Wednesday if we do see a low develop - but N’ly winds would persist in the north under this scenario. 

As such, right now it’s looking dicey but I do think we’ll see plenty of window of opportunity, as any onshore pattern won’t be properly entrenched across the coast - though it needs to be said that conditions don’t look fantastic by any stretch. Anyway, I’ll have a better idea on this on Monday, and I'll update in the comments over the weekend if there are any major developments.

The trough itself should generate some small E’ly swell from Monday through Wednesday (mainly for Northern NSW) with size perking up into the 2-3ft range at times. 

The long term outlook has plenty of swell sources to monitor too. 

A developing trade flow south of Samoa over the weekend will supply small, inconsistent E’ly swells through the middle to latter part of next week. There’s also a suggestion for a Tropical Cyclone north of Fiji around Boxing Day that could slide into our swell window and generate an E/NE swell around the turn of the New Year (though this is a very long time away).

Otherwise, a steady supply of migrating fronts through the Southern Ocean will keep Northern NSW busy through the last week of the current year, and the first week of the new year. I’ll have more details on that in Monday’s update. 

Have a great weekend!