South-east Queensland and Northern NSW Surf Forecast by Steve Shearer (issued Fri 21st Mar)

Features of the Forecast (tl;dr)

• Small E’ly swells Sat with light winds tending NE in the a’noon
• Small leftovers Sun
• Rebuilding fun E'ly swell Tues/Wed/Thurs, and a possible bigger swell next weekend
• Flukey S-S/SE groundswell in the water later Tues into Wed- likely weak signal next to tradeswell but still worth a squizz at S exposed breaks
• More small S swell pulses likely medium term

Recap

Plenty of fun sized E’ly swell yesterday with sets to 3ft across most of the region and generally light winds and a’noon seabreezes. Some areas were still seeing flood affected water quality and degraded sand bars but generally we are in repair mode. Size has eased just a smidge today with clean 2-3ft surf and light winds tending to a’noon NE breezes. 

Banks still iffy but a nice little E swell in the water

This weekend (Mar 22 - 23)

No great change to the weekend forecast, which is looking like another one with small E swells. Very slack pressure gradients in the Tasman as a decaying trough and front move slowly north with light NW-N winds on Sat tending to weak a’noon NE seabreezes. A tradewind fetch which was being enhanced by a trough off the SEQLD coast has slackened so we’ll see E’ly swells come down a notch into the 2ft range through Sat. 

Similar surf for Sun, maybe just a smidge smaller but still offering the occ. 2ft set mostly from the E. Winds around the MNC- Coffs region look the lightest as a trough hovers over the area. Winds should stay light enough for a surf most of the day throughout the region if you have a particularly good small wave bank to utilise. Otherwise, good day for mowing the lawn.

Next week (Mar 24 onwards)

High pressure will be in the Tasman next week with ridge along the sub-tropics and a tradewind fetch enhanced by a long monsoon trough extending from the Indian Ocean across the north of the continent out to the South Pacific Island chains.

Generally speaking we’ll that enhanced trade flow develop early next week with juicier options on the table later next week as the trough dips southwards. 

Expect small surf to continue Mon, with light winds starting to tend more E/SE-SE as the new high pressure ridge builds. 

By Tues we should start to see a gradual building trend from the E as new tradewind swell slowly fills in, typically just adding energy to the top end in single wave sets. 

Tues/Wed offers some potential from the southern quadrant  with models picking up some long period S/SE groundswell generated by a slow moving polar low around the edge of the Antarctic ice shelf in the vicinity of the Ross Sea (see below). These swells usually under-perform in NENSW but we still may see some long lined sets later Tues into Wed in the 2-3ft range, likely down in the mix of dominant E’ly trade swell.

For the second half of next week we’ll be looking to the E for increasing swells as the monsoon trough migrates southwards and focusses tradewinds into a stronger fetch. On it’s own that suggests swells increasing to 3ft through Thurs and up into the 3-4ft range into Fri.

Of more interest are modelled outcomes suggesting a trough forming off the QLD, or even NENSW coast which increases wind speeds and more directly aims the fetch at either QLD (EC) or NSW (GFS). Still too early to have any confidence in specifics due to the model divergence but we’ll keep eyes on it over the weekend and see how’s it looking Mon. That does offer potential for a juicier E swell potentially into the 5-6ft range- we’ll track it over the weekend and see how it looks on Mon.

The southern storm track looks to stay reasonably active into this period as well, suggesting more small/moderate S swell pulses into the medium term. 

We’ll see how all that looks on Mon.

Until then, have a great weekend!