12:00a.m. 31st May 2008

| By Jane Gardner and Toby Walker

Surfers struggle to negotiate the rock jump at Boiling Pot in the Noosa National Park during yesterday's pounding surf. Photo: Che Chapman/n20630b

Wind gusts and pounding surf have already begun to undo months of hard work to regenerate erosion on Noosa Main Beach caused by January’s wild weather.

Noosa senior lifeguard Isaac Smith said sand had already been swept away from the area where the council recently completed sand pumping, but the rocks were not yet exposed.

“Noosa beach has already copped a bit of erosion,” he said.

“There is still a bit of beach there but it has eroded. The council did a very good job with it – they had backhoes and bobcats here pushing the sand up and had the sand pumps going two weeks ago.”

He said that amazingly, tourists still braved Noosa beach yesterday, despite the 1.5-metre swell and miserable cold, wet, conditions.

Photo Gallery: Wild weather hits the coast

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Maroochy lifeguard supervisor Heath Collie said it was unlikely the Coast would suffer the same levels of erosion that damaged our beaches in January.

“The swell has just come up and generally it takes a couple of days of it hitting the shore to make a noticeable difference,” he said.

“We are only getting high tides around 1.5 metres, which shouldn’t cause a big problem.

“It’s when you get the big swell coupled with king tides that the erosion can be significant.

“Some of the tides in January were topping two metres.”

Photo Gallery: Beach erosion

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Beach erosion caused by January's storms

Mr Collie warned beachgoers to exercise extra caution on the Coast’s open beaches, as the swell kicked up over the weekend.

“The swell is about four foot at the moment but it might get bigger through the weekend, so certainly anyone heading to the open beaches needs to be aware of the dangerous conditions,” he said.

Rainfall from midnight to 4.30pm yesterday

Sippy Downs: 60mm

Palmwoods: 55mm

Tanawha: 75mm

Mountain Creek: 67mm

Landsborough: 54mm

Yandina: 87mm

Eumundi: 103mm

Coolum: 68mm

Nambour: 77mm

Maroochydore: 69mm

Lake Cooroibah: 89mm

Tewantin: 97mm

Noosa Heads: 103mm

Cooroy: 110mm

Cooran: 103mm