South-east Queensland and Northern NSW Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Wednesday 2nd December)

Best Days: Still potential for interesting long period (maybe sizeable) south swells across Northern NSW on Thurs/Fri, though winds look tricky (especially south from Yamba on Thurs). Otherwise small surf in SE Qld with variable winds. Mon/Tues: punchy N'ly windswell with slowly improving conditions. More south swell later next week. 

Recap: Easing S/SE swells maintained 3-4ft sets Tuesday morning south from Byron, smaller across SE Qld with 2ft+ waves on offer. Size eased through the day, and early light winds swung NE into the afternoon. Size settled back at a slow 2ft across Northern NSW today (1-1.5ft SE Qld) and winds have freshened N/NE all day ahead of a S’ly change into Coffs around 2:20pm and Yamba at 5pm. A short range south swell is now filling into the Mid North Coast. 

This week (Dec 3 - 4)

There’s a small south swell due across Northern NSW on Thursday, from two sources - a short fetch trailing the change, and also W/SW gales exiting eastern Bass Strait. However the change is expected to stall on the Northern Rivers overnight, so it’s likely that the coast south from Coffs or Yamba will be wind affected with S/SE tending E/SE breezes.

North from about Yamba, we’re more like to see variable winds on Thursday. Note: ‘variable’ means ‘from any direction’, which could be northerly, as is progged by some of the highness models - though no major strength is expected, so there should be pockets of clean conditions.

As for surf, south facing beaches south of Byron should pick up 2-3ft sets and there’ll be some short range SE swell in the mix too, from the southern flank of the trough. 

Across SE Qld, I don’t see much size getting in north of the border. The south swells certainly won’t amount to much, only the short range SE energy has potential, where we may see slow 2ft sets on the Goldy on Thursday and smaller surf across the Sunny Coast. Keep your expectations low. 

Otherwise, the main item on the short term agenda is a series of new long period south swells from an incredible low that formed south-west of Tasmania yesterday.

The image below shows storm force winds around the low, and also highlights the main headache I have at the moment - working out how much of this fetch is shadowed behind Tasmania, and how much sits just inside the western periphery of our acute south swell window. 

Make no mistake - had this low been positioned another 5-10 degree further east (and, a little more meridional in alignment), then we’d have been looking at easy 15ft+ surf across some south facing beaches in NSW. It’s a beast of a system.

But, the primary fetch is slightly off axis, and Tasmania will absorb a lot of the energy, so we can expect a much smaller percentage of long period energy to bend up along the NSW coast into Thursday. The models certainly don’t like this swell either, expecting just 0.3m at 18 seconds Thursday morning (Coffs Harbour), increasing to 0.5m at 17 seconds by the end of the day. But I think this is a major under call.

Enough waffling. How big? Some south swell magnets could see occasional 4-6ft sets. But, I expect they’ll be the exception rather than the rule, so if you’re hunting these kinds of waves then the usual suspects will be your best bet (i.e. probably the Mid North Coast, with a greatly reduced probability across the Northern Rivers).

Most south facing beaches will probably max out in the 2-3ft+ range and it’ll be smaller at beaches not open to the south. I’m not expecting much size in SE Qld at all, away from exposed northern ends and south facing beaches (late 2-3ft sets, smaller for most of the day).

This is not a high confidence event at all, and the large periods (19-20 seconds) will create a much broader range in wave heights from beach to beach than usual south swells. The swell will also arrive later in the north than in the south, so it’s really an afternoon event for the most part. Let’s monitor Southern NSW (i.e. the Hunter region) in the morning as that should provide a good heads up.

Northerlies are on the agenda for Friday, though more pronounced north from Coffs and strongest across SE Qld, thanks to a trough spreading up into the Mid North Coast. 

We are looking at a slightly broader coverage of more useful southerly groundswell rebuilding during the day, from the main fetch as it traveled from underneath the Tasmania swell shadow today. It’s still a relatively low confidence event, but I can’t see any reason to downgrade Monday’s estimate of 2-3ft surf at south facing beaches south of Byron, increasing to 3-4ft+ by late in the day (rare bigger sets at reliable south swell magnets). 

SE Qld will be smaller, occasional 2-3ft at a handful of exposed northern ends into the afternoon, but smaller earlier and smaller at most open beaches and outer points.

This weekend (Dec 5 - 6)

No change to the weekend outlook.

Aside from an early window of light winds on Saturday, we’re looking at strengthening northerlies all weekend. They’ll generate plenty of windswell (3ft SE Qld by Sunday, 3-4ft+ Northern NSW), but quality will remain very low. 

Sunday morning has a chance for a slight tweak in the wind around to the N/NW, and winds should ease across the Lower Mid North Coast through the day - I’ll take a closer look at that. 

For the record, a modest front under Tasmania on Friday should set up a small southerly swell for Sunday, and Saturday should also see some small trailing energy from Friday’s swell - but only really across Northern NSW. 

Next week (Dec 7 onwards)

Monday’s got plenty of potential with punchy though receding N’ly windswells around the 3ft mark and a trough and associated southerly change that’ll gradually make its way across the coast. Though it may not influence the border regions (and SE Qld) until very late. I’ll reassess the timing in Friday’s notes. 

Easing swells and light winds are then expected Tuesday. Beyond this, we’re still looking at elevated southerly swells through much of next week as the LWT stalls across our region and a deep Southern Ocean low slingshots secondary fronts through our south swell window. At this stage the pattern has been delayed a little - so I’m not confident on size for Monday - but Wednesday through the weekend is looking like seeing an extended period of sizeable, chunky surf across Northern NSW.

See you Friday!