South-east Queensland and Northern NSW Surf Forecast by Steve Shearer (issued Fri 4th Aug)

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• E’ly tradewind swell building through Fri peaking over the weekend
• Winds easing over the weekend (stronger north of Moreton Island)
• E’ly tradewind swell lingers into next week before easing with mostly light S’ly winds
• Tricky, troughy pattern next week with some surf potential (nothing major expected)- check back Mon for latest update

Recap

Small, mixed bag across NENSW yesterday with S swell and SE swell to 3ft, with smaller SE swells to 2ft in SEQLD under mod SE winds. Today has seen a little more size a few 2-3ft waves about, although mostly heavily wind affected in SEQLD still apart from the Points which have some small peelers on offer. Much lighter winds on offer in NENSW.

A few chunky peaks building if you could get out of the wind

This weekend (Aug 5-6)

No great change to the weekend f/cast. Current ASCAT (satellite windspeed) passes show a very healthy fetch of SE-E/SE tradewinds extending through the Central/Southern Coral Seas with plenty of fun E’ly tradewind swell expected over the weekend.

Shame that little low is not this side of New Caledonia, still a very healthy tradewind fetch for August

Pressure gradients ease across the region, although there will still be plenty of SE wind on the Sunshine Coast. From the Southern Gold Coast down to NENSW we should see a morning offshore breeze before light E’ly breezes kick in. Those winds will be stronger the further north you go in SEQLD. Plenty of fun E’ly swell in the 3ft range, a notch bigger on the Sunshine Coast and a notch smaller south of Yamba.

Sun sees a weak S’ly change extending up the coast, with light SW breezes early in the usual places, tending E’ly then SE in SQLD, more S/SE in NENSW. Open beaches will still be wind affected on the Sunshine Coast but winds look light enough for the Gold Coast and NENSW to have clean or semi-clean options on Sun morning. Size should boost a notch to 3-4ft, with plenty of fun waves on the Points through the day once S-SE winds are established.

Next week (Aug 7 onwards)

Not much change expected for the outlook for early-mid next week.

Reinforcing high pressure moving towards and then East of Tasmania maintains a fairly weak ridge along the sub-tropics with a light/mod S’ly flow Mon and Tues. We should see morning land breezes both days before the synoptic flow kicks in. 

E’ly tradewind swell chugs away nicely into Mon with surf holding to 3ft or so, but by Tuesday an easing trend will be well set in with 2-3ft surf in the morning, easing during the day.

A minor SE fetch around a troughy area in the central Tasman may supply some small SE swell Wed/Thurs but keep expectations low- it looks like we'll see surf become small during this period.

That troughy pattern is causing problems for weather models from mid next week so we may be up for major revision when we come back Mon. There’s lot of model to model variability and divergence between models.

We may see a developing N’ly flow Thurs and possible workable NE windswell as the high drifts towards NZ and a trough approaches. That trough may move offshore late next week and maintain an E/NE-E/SE swell with an onshore flow into the weekend.

Alternatively GFS suggests a weak, troughy pattern persisting across the coast and into the Tasman with no major swell sources into the weekend and tiny surf coming established.

Any potential low pressure development in the South Pacific window north of NZ now looks to race away to the SE or be blocked by the North Island with very low odds for quality E swell for Eastern Aus.

We’ll keep fingers crossed and see how it looks Mon.

Until then, have a great weekend!