Western Arthurs Weather

[bhogan]

Hi all,

I'm in the early stages of planning an attempt to walk the Western Arthurs (A-K) in early December.

What weather station and websites can people recommend to get forecasts for the area? (I know it can be extremely localised)

I want to do my best to not walk into bad weather that could've been easily avoided. In particular (time and provisions permitting) I will wait for a good weather window between Lake Oberon and Haven Lake.

Also, does anyone have a copy of John Chapman's "South West Tasmania" that they would be happy to sell to me? I'm currently on the e-mail list for the revised edition which I think will be published early October.

[beardless]

For the Western Arthurs we referred to Strathgordon on the BoM site, but assumed it would be colder and wetter. As we progressed towards the Eastern Arthurs we also considered the Geeveston forecasts, again with the assumption it would be colder and potentially wetter.

[Geevesy]

I pretty much look only at the synoptic chart forecast actually (both the BOM one and the 10 day one at http://www.weatherzone.com.au/models/) - if there is a high coming over the state just as you're starting your walk, you have a pretty high chance of settled weather, more often than not fine. Easterly or Northerly is the best for the SW. If it's Southerly it will obviously be very cold (snow), westerly will be showery (so anything really there). I find the forecasts for particular towns not that helpful when assessing a walk's forecast.

Met-Eye is also great once you're just about to leave to check for any chance of snow/extreme weather.

[bhogan]

Cheers guys.

[Son of a Beach]

I've done walks in the Western Arthurs where there was stable fine sunny weather forecast for the entire trip, and all the people at home said that the forecast remained that good the entire time we were out. The entire state experienced excellent weather... except for the Western Arthurs.

We got rain for 11 out of 12 days, despite perfect weather forecast. It was perfect weather everywhere else (north-north-westerly in this case). In fact, from some locations, we could actually see the edge of the black clouds, and perfectly blue skies beyond. That black/blue line in the sky didn't move for the entire 12 days, and half way through the last day, we walked out from under the black sky into perfect sunshine under the blue sky. We were able to look back, and see that the Arthurs were all still in the rain. It was quite surreal.

People back home were shocked to hear that we'd seen any rain at all, as the weather reports were for clear, sunny and hot for the entire state for the entire period we were away.

So whatever forecast you get, you still need to be prepared for anything out there!

(I have also had some good weather in the Arthurs on other trips, so I'm not trying to imply that it rains there all the time.)