South-east Queensland and Northern NSW Surf Forecast by James Casey (issued Friday 4th June)

Best Days: Saturday, Sunday and Thursday

Outlook (tl;dr)

• Building south swell for Saturday with fresh S winds
• Easing Sunday but with improving conditions, though nothing great
• Quiet start to next week
• Low point on Tuesday/Wednesday
• Small E swell for Thursday
• Interesting setup for late next week into the weekend with potential for a run of E swell

Recap

The past few days have seen the swell ease with fun waves on offer yesterday in the 3-4ft range early south of the border while more like 2ft for SE QLD. 

Today it’s about as small as it gets with waves about 1ft and not much to get excited about. 

Into the weekend 

Later today (Friday) we will see a SW change strongest along the MNC and extending up  into N NSW later in the afternoon and SE QLD overnight. The front seems to be double headed with a stronger S change to arrive in the early hours of Saturday morning.

This second head will generate the best pulse of S swell building into the afternoon tomorrow (Saturday) with a peak up around 4-5ft for S swell magnets south of the border. SE QLD won’t see a lot of size from this swell as most of it goes straight past.

While Saturday is looking to be the biggest day of waves in the next week winds are not looking great to get amongst the most of the size. It’ll be best early with a bit of W in the S winds but from mid morning onwards it looks like winds will be strong out of the S/SE so expect bumpy conditions if you are looking at the spots with the most size. Protected southern corners and points will be your better option but it will be smaller. 

Sunday is looking to be a better day for conditions. While the swell will ease a little all in all it is looking like a better day for waves. Waves will be more around 3-4ft south of the border but with W/SW winds for most of the morning there’ll be plenty of options to choose from. An afternoon seabreeze will create small bumps later but I’d put up with it as there isn’t much on the cards for later in the week.

For SE QLD the swell direction becomes a bit more S/SE on Sunday so there should be a little more swell getting in on Sunday than Saturday. With better winds there should be some fun, yet small, beachies at exposed spots. 

Next week 

What’s left of the S/SE swell will be all that’s on offer for the start of next week. It’s not looking great with small waves best at S swell magnets. Winds will be light and variable early before strengthening out of the E/NE, stronger out of the NE for the MNC. 

From Tuesday onwards I’m looking for something to get excited about for the rest of the week but really there’s not much going on from Monday until Thursday. The winds out of the N on Monday afternoon look a little too weak and too N where they are stronger meaning at most there’ll just be small windswelly waves. 

Further out to sea there’s some E winds in the eastern Tasman with a low over NZ’s North Island on Monday/Tuesday. It’s not looking like an overly long fetch on this side of NZ but it is better than anything else that is going on. I’d expect 2ft+ of E swell but not until Thursday.

This means we are set to endure the worst run of waves we’ve had all year with small to flat waves from Tuesday to Wednesday. We can’t really complain though can we, it’s been pretty good. Take it as a good time to catch up on any chores you’ve neglected for the past six months. 

Further ahead there looks to be more E swell on the way as an easterly trade swell setup looks to ramp up with winds feeding into a low over the southeast of the nation.

More on that on Monday.