South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales Surf Forecast by Ben Matson (issued Wednesday 22nd October)

Best Days: Small window of light winds Thursday morning with peaky beachbreaks in most areas. Saturday afternoon and possibly Sunday morning are looking potentially really good for the Lower Mid North Coast. Northerly winds look like they'll ruin the surf elsewhere.

Recap: A small, infrequent east swell produced 2-3ft sets at most exposed beaches yesterday and today. Additionally, a small southerly groundswell and a short range SE swell also provided additional options at exposed beaches. Unfortunately, apart from a few brief windows of light winds, conditions have remained generally average to poor at most location. 

This week (Oct 23-24)

A brisk northerly regime will dominate the NSW coast for the next three or four days, although winds will initially be more easterly in direction in SE Qld and Far Northern NSW. 

As such, surf prospects will largely hinge around these winds and their effects at exposed beaches. For most locations there’s not much to get excited about but if you’re lucky - and live between about Yamba and Seal Rocks - there may be a few windows of opportunity over the weekend. 

Surf wise, the small east swell in the water today is expected to persist through Thursday before easing slowly Friday. Due to the enormous travel distance, we’re likely to see very long breaks between sets but open beaches in most areas should see occasional sets between 2ft and possibly 3ft.

Elsewhere, freshening N/NE winds are not expected to contribute a great deal of short range swell until the weekend but we may see a few small waves (say, 2ft+) across the Mid North Coast on Friday, with smaller surf north from here. A weak trough in the central/eastern Tasman Sea may provide some small small E/SE energy through the end of the week but no major size is expected from this source. 

This weekend (Oct 25-26)

N/NE winds are expected to become very strong off the Northern NSW coast during Friday, which will generate some short range energy for Saturday. 

Due to the close proximity of the fetch to the mainland, its narrow width, and its limited extent north of the Qld/NSW border, we’ll see most of the size from this source across the Lower Mid North Coast (3-4ft+) with smaller waves along the North Coast (2-3ft) and smaller surf again in SE Qld (1-2ft). However it'll be quite bumpy to begin with due to the accompanying fresh to strong N/NE winds. 

As a shallow southerly change pushes along the southern NSW coast on Saturday, our swell-producing N/NE fetch will slide further away from the mainland, slowly aligning itself outside of the Lower Mid North Coast’s swell window - but possibly remaining inside SE Qld’s near swell window (although wave heights won’t be large here anyway, and local conditions will be very average). 

The upshot of this suggests that Saturday morning will probably be blown out at most locations but an improvement is expected in the south during the day as a trough associated with the southerly change influences the region, sliding northwards into the afternoon (current model guidance suggests it won’t reach further than about Yamba, but let’s wait and see how Friday’s data pans out).

If this occurs, most locations in the Far North NSW and SE Qld regions will be quite poor on Saturday but the afternoon session should be very good from Coffs Harbour south.

On Sunday, model guidance stalls this trough across the Mid North Coast, keeping northerly winds throughout the Far North NSW and SE Qld coasts, but allowing light winds to persist south of Coffs Harbour. Wave heights are likely to slowly ease during this time.

All in all it’s quite a complex pattern so I’ll take a closer look on Friday.

Long term (Oct 27 onwards)

An amplifying Long Wave Trough below the continent over the weekend is expected to drive a series of strong fronts south of the Tasman Sea early next week, which suggests a return to a persistent southerly swell regime through the middle to latter part of next week (that would only favour exposed south facing beaches in Northern NSW). More on this in Friday’s notes.