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Forecast issued: Monday, February 08, 2010
Sunshine Coast Gold Coast North Coast NSW ADVERTISEMENT Forecast issued 5.00pm Monday, 8 February 2010. By Ben Macartney Short Forecast Tuesday E swell 4 – 5ft across northern NSW and Gold Coast open beaches, gradually easing. WIND: E/SE 10 – 20 knots. Wednesday: ESE swell 3 – 4ft+ across the region. WIND: E/SE 10 – 15 knots. Thursday ESE swell 2 – 3ft+ exposed open beaches. WIND: ESE to E/NE 5 – 15 knots. Friday: E swell 2 - 3ft across the region, easing into the afternoon. WIND: E/SE to E/NE 10 – 20 knots. Saturday E swell 1 - 2ft open beaches. WIND: Early light and variable going SE to NE 10 – 15 knots. Sunday E swell 1 - 2ft open beaches. WIND: ESE 5 – 15 knots. Recap A relentless run of easterly swell continued to pump across the entire East Coast over the weekend. Wave heights generally ranged between four and six feet across the Far North Coast and south-eastern Queensland, grading to a foot or two smaller from the Hunter south. Forecast Overview A steady weakening of the high pressure ridge spanning the Tasman sets up a gradual easing trend over the coming days. The swell will still hold at eminently rideable levels into the middle of the week, so it’s definitely worth getting amongst the tail end of this episode before it dries up altogether into the weekend. The slow moving ridge continued to interact with the monsoon trough over the weekend, aiming low end ESE gales at much of the Queensland coast. Wind speeds decreased south of the trough, dropping to direct a long 15 to 25 knots between the 25S to 30S parallels. The stronger wind speeds straddling the northern Tasman and southern Coral Sea maintain solid E swell across the region during the first half of the week before fading to lower levels into Thursday and Friday. E swell holds around four to five feet on Tuesday E swell continues to range either side of four feet on Tuesday, combining with another slight shift in swell direction, coming in straight out of the east. Unfortunately surface conditions won’t be ideal. The firm high pressure ridge extending across the Queensland coast maintains light to moderate E/SE winds across the region. Getting in early should see a period of lighter wind speeds of five to fifteen knots, probably increasing towards 15 to 20 knots mid morning; Source; BOM; It's worth getting in early. Expect light to moderate ESE winds increasing to 15 to 20 knots on Tuesday. Expect similar conditions on Wednesday and Thursday. Slightly smaller again by Wednesday A further drop in size sees E swell still hovering around three to four feet across exposed coasts on Wednesday. Again it’s worth making the most of early light ESE winds before they increase to ten to twenty knots and the swell further abates into the afternoon. By Thursday morning E swell is back to two to three feet at short periods of eight seconds under lighter ESE winds. By Friday it’s just about all over; one to two feet plus of short range E swell combining with a lighter NE to SE wind regime prevailing as the Tasman high continues to weaken and drift away towards New Zealand; Source; BOM. A weak high lingering over the Tasman sees a lighter wind regime through the second half of the week. At this point there’s very little to look forward to this weekend. A subdued tradewind flow setting in across our E swell window sets up a period of tiny E swell, probably hovering around one to two feet into Monday and Tuesday next week. Beyond that we may begin to see some renewed activity across our long range E swell window, deep in the tropical South Pacific. Several key models pick up the gradual evolution of a tropical low somewhere east of Samoa, out past the date line near 170Wto 160W this weekend. The same models develop the system to tropical cyclone strengths early next week. Assuming this proves correct, we’re likely to see a strong tradewind flow developing east of the 180E meridian, setting up a new E swell train inbound across the region through the second half of next week. This is a tenuous swell source; the low has not yet developed and even if it does, it’s likely to follow the same south-eastward path of previous tropical storms that have developed over the area over the last month. Hence any resulting tradewind swell would undergo significant decay before making landfall across the East Coast, optimistically bumping up to two to three feet across exposed coasts between Wednesday 17 and Friday 20; confidence on this remains low so keep an eye out for revisions during the week. Long range Closer to home, some recent model runs pick up a weak area of low pressure developing off the NSW coast as a high pressure ridge builds across the southern Tasman on Monday 15 Feb. If this proves accurate we may see a minor increase in SE windswell into the middle of next week, but this appears unlikely to top one to two feet. This is still highly speculative and revisions are likely over the coming days.