A cyclone watch for Queensland’s southern coast has been withdrawn but category one Oma is still making its presence felt as it sits offshore.

Forecasters say the weather system will continue to bring high winds and dangerous surf conditions to parts of the Queensland and northern New South Wales coast in the coming days.

Early on Friday, Oma was about 700km north-east of Brisbane. Late on Thursday it was about 820km northeast of Brisbane, packing wind gusts of up to 130km/h.

It was slowly moving south and was expected to intensify to a category two storm later in the day, before making a U-turn on Saturday and heading north again.

#CycloneOma has weakened overnight to cat 1 strength & expected to move to the south-southwest during the next 24-36 hrs. Oma may intensity later today to cat 2—expected remain well off the southeast Qld coast. Several warnings are in place:https://t.co/75atzvknLZ #TCOma pic.twitter.com/FrH1OPnWkI — Bureau of Meteorology, Australia (@BOM_au) February 21, 2019

The Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, urged people not to go out into the surf. Addressing the media on Friday, she said the authorities would continue to monitor the cyclone and warned of the hazardous conditions on the beaches despite the downgrade.

Bruce Gunn, the Queensland Bureau of Meteorology state manager, said tropical cyclone Oma could cause significant coastal erosion and water levels could exceed the highest tide of the year.

He said the diametre of this system, at 600km, was twice that of cyclone Debbie, although the latter had more intense winds.

Gunn said they were not expecting the cyclone to intensify into a category three or four storm, but would keep a close watch on how things developed.

Tropical Cyclone Oma is now Category 1. The Cyclone Watch has been cancelled as the system is forecast to stay offshore through the weekend. Abnormally high tides & dangerous surf conditions continue. Refer to the latest Severe Weather Warnings #CycloneOma https://t.co/rVLE6i5J4y pic.twitter.com/nml5iOrBYt — Bureau of Meteorology, Queensland (@BOM_Qld) February 21, 2019

Earlier, Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Jonty Hall had told ABC radio: “Although the centre of Oma is going to stay a fair way off the coast, it is still going to be quite windy. There is still the potential for some damaging wind gusts in the order of 90, 100km/h.

“Two and a half, three days ago a lot of our computer models were suggesting that it was going to get quite close to the coast or even cross the coast, which would have been a pretty bad scenario for us in southern Queensland, but we have steadily moved away from that.”

Several beaches remained closed and people were advised not to take their boats out to the water as conditions could worsen.

Dangerous winds, surf and abnormally high tides were expected to continue into the weekend from near Fraser Island down to the NSW border.

The same conditions were expected as far south as Yamba in northern NSW.