South-east Queensland and Northern NSW Surf Forecast by Steve Shearer (issued Mon 30th Oct)

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Fresh pulse of E/SE swell Tues, with N’ly winds and a late S’ly change south of the border
• Mix of E/SE, short range SE and S swells Wed with SE winds
• Easing swells and wind Thurs
• Small mixed bag Fri
• Not much over the weekend, small NE windswell at best 
• Small to start next week, possible E’ly tradewind swell by mid week

Recap

Plenty of solid, good/great waves over the weekend favouring NENSW Points with Sat seeing strong 4-6ft surf, smaller 3-5ft in SEQLD. Stiff S’ly winds eased through the day. Sunday was similar sized, with surf tending more E’ly in direction and lighter winds, tending to E-NE breezes in the a’noon. Another morning of pumping surf this morning with 5-6ft surf in NENSW, grading smaller 3-5ft in SEQLD, smaller on the Points. Slack morning winds led to glassy conditions before NE winds kicked up and blew out most spots. All in all, a very tidy swell event for the end of October.

North Coast Points pumped all weekend long

This week (Oct 30- Nov 3)

The Tasman low of sub-tropical origins which has sprayed the East Coast with swell is now just north of the North Island, with some swell generating winds still active to the west of the North Island, although quite limited in length. It’s deepened and is hammering the North Island sending another pulse of E/SE swell our way. Weak high pressure in the Tasman is directing a N’ly flow across most of the East Coast, with a trough and front bringing a S’ly change and  tomorrow, reaching the sub-tropics on Wed. Along with residual E/SE swell from the low near the North Island we’ll see a mixed bag of S swell trains from mid week with a general easing trend into the weekend. 

In the short run we’ll see winds from the N freshen tomorrow with a S’ly change working it’s way north. That change looks to hit Coffs mid-late a’noon before stalling around a developing trough and just reaching the Northern Rivers on dark, o’night across the border. We are expecting a new pulse of E/SE swell from an intensification of the low as it approached the North Island. That should see another pulse of 4-5ft surf fill in through the wee hrs and hold through the day. If you can deal with the winds there’ll be quality swell in the water.

S’ly winds Wed, with just a brief window of SW winds  before winds clock around S/SE-SE and freshen around a small trough of low pressure off the QLD border. Tuesdays E/SE’ly pulse will still be offering some 3-4ft surf under an easing trend with building short and medium range S swells building to a similar size. There’ll be some workable surf on the Points and a few raggedy options across semi-protected beachies.

Nice little mixed bag of swells Thurs, with a light/lingering SE’ly flow on offer. We should see a fairly widespread SW breeze inshore for the morning before winds clock around light SE through the day. Residual E/SE’ly and short range SE swells will still be throwing up the occ. 2-3ft wave, with easing S swells and some long period S wrapping in from the deep parent low. All told, nothing amazing but there should be a range of fun surf options on offer. 

The easing trend continues into Fri with small leftover swells from the S and E in the 2ft range, dropping through the day. Conditions should be clean early under light land breezes before winds tend to light NE seabreezes. There’ll be a grovel on offer to end the working week.

This weekend (Oct 28-29)

Not much swell energy expected this weekend. Just a small blend of swells for Sat under a NE flow, likely best for s grovel early under light NW winds. We may see some small NE windswell get generated in the a’noon.

Better odds for a surfable NE windswell on Sun- especially south of Yamba- under a similar mod/fresh N-N/NE flow. Keep expectations low but we may see some 2-3ft NE windswell by Sun a’noon. One caveat is EC suggesting a small trough may form off the NSW Hunter coast Sun, with a larger NE swell possible.  There’s poor run to run consistency and GFS is not interested so we’ll flag it for now and see how it looks on Wed. 

Next week (Oct 30 onwards)

Looks like a fairly quiet and more typical Spring week ahead next week. Unless that little trough of low pressure EC is interested in winds up, we’re mostly looking at high pressure in the Tasman and E-NE winds.

A zonal storm track under the continent may send up a few traces of S swell wrap but anything arriving looks to be negligible.

We may see some small E’ly tradewind swell start to build by mid week if the high in the Tasman behaves itself. Nothing major but a few fun 2ft waves are on the menu Tues-Wed, possibly a notch bigger 2-3ft later next week.

Just for the record the area around the Solomon Islands is still showing signs of convective activity so we’ll keep an eye on that for ny signs of developing tropical depressions or even another TC although the odds would be extremely low. 

Check back Wed and we’ll see how it’s looking.