Arthur's Pass forecast questions (14 & 15 Jan)

A bit late but I was there from the 11th to the 13th. Camped at Carroll Hut carpark for the night, on the west side, planning to do it the next day, it rained all night and creeks and rivers doubled in size overnight. In the morning the water was brown and rushing with sound of the rocks rolling. We decided to try something else, drove to Arthur Pass and as soon as we passed the highest point on the road it was sunny, perfect weather, warm, no rain, and creeks and rivers were low and clear. Rangers at the DOC visitor centre seemed surprised themselves. We decided on Beavey Spur hut, great place, you can follow a track uphill after the hut, up to a cairn at 1525 metres (a bit before the 1545 point on the map) with great views. This is easy and safe and a good idea as a day walk. Next day we continued a route on the ridge towards Jordan Saddle, slow travel along the ridge, up to point 1875, down the saddle and descending Jordan stream all the way to the Waitak river. Was an awesome adventure. Took us about 9 hours, 4.5 hours to the saddle, then 3.5 hours to the end of Jordan stream, and another hour on the nice marked track back to the road. Great weather, sunny all day, gorgeous tramping, all of that while the west coast was drenched in water :)

windchill temperature is reflective of a combination of the air temperature and windspeed, the windchill temperature is a temperature that will effectively have the same effect as the windchill temperature with no wind, the windier it is the lower the windchill will be from the real temperature. It's designed to give an idea of what the temperature will feel like in the wind that is forecast... ie you will get colder faster the windier it is... you could look at the air temp and say well its 15 degrees its not that cold, but when you factor in the windchill then you get a better idea of how the wind will affect the conditions... and what sort of clothes you will need to stay warm... but the windchill temps put out on the metservice site arent consistent, i've seen different sites with the same air temp and windspeed give different windchill temps... theres various charts on the internet that will show you how much wind speed affects windchill temp heres an example Note: the colder the air temp the greater the windchill increases for a given windspeed, so the effect of windchill magnifies greatly and increases geometrically at colder air temps http://www.ozemedicine.com/wiki/doku.php?id=frostbite

Thanks for all the replies everyone. I ended up taking the conservative decision of postponing. We'll hopefully find a good weekend to go in the coming weeks. Thanks Andrew