It's raining in Milford Sound

By Alistair Child 14 November 2006

The weather forecast is not good. A heavy rain warning for the Fiordland area and wouldn’t you know it, today is the day you planned to go to Milford.

What to do, well, just go anyway. Pack a good waterproof coat and go, it's only water. There may even be some wind so be ready for a thrill, you may see or experience something that you have never seen before.

It's just as well not everyone takes too much notice of the weather, or is worried about a little water. These people pack their adventurous spirit and off they go to Milford or Doubtful Sounds. For many others a wet weather forecast stops them in their tracks, holed up in Queenstown or somewhere (bored) waiting for better things. Well, the better things are at Milford for those who go. Let me tell you something about Fiordland weather. It’s a rain forest so it rains and that rain can be very heavy, but not all the time. The weather can and does get dry, the driest I have seen it is in a Fiordland drought lasting up to thirty-five days.

Wow that’s dry, well it’s dry for Fiordland where it can rain at least once in a twenty-four hour period for 283 days of a year.
On the wettest year there was 9m of rain and the driest there was only 4m, the average is some 7m per year. It's not that it rains every day it's just that when it does rain it can be heavy, really heavy and sometimes reaching 30 to 40mm per hour.

Picture this, you are in your motel admiring how well the shower works and wishing the one at home was just as good. Imagine the whole fiord being the same. They are huge areas and with equally huge valleys leading into them, and just like your shower,  it's heavy rain and its everywhere.

Lady Bowen Falls

Suddenly there are waterfalls. Where there were none, now there are hundreds. Some really large like the Lady Bowen Falls; see the photo on the left. (She’s no lady when she is in this mood).

Then there is the wind, it enters the fiord from the North West as an active front approaches. These winds gust down the narrows of the fiord picking up speed as they go. They can gust as hard as 120+ knots at times. They can create many whorly whorls with amazing water spouts. Huge up drafts

drawing wind and water up the mountain sides, also great down drafts. So you can imagine it can really do its thing, blowing some of the water falls upside down. The water from some falls gets blown to oblivion.  They can look like a curtain hanging upside down. If the view and the drama doesn’t take your breath away then the wind will.

But hey, I am not trying to scare you, it is safe, the cruise boats will not go out if their skippers think it is not safe. I might mention here that there has never been a bad weather related incident, in my time in Milford Sound. A few white faces maybe, a few dropped jaws but all home and safe.

Some people come off these boats very very wet, because they won’t come inside the vessel and out of the rain, just in case they miss something. They can’t stop talking about it for weeks “did you see this, did you see that” and so on and so on.

So my advice to you if you’re wondering what to do in wet weather is to ‘go’. On a clear day you will get one good view of the fiord but on a cloudy or weather filled day you will get a hundred views as the fiord and everything about it is forever changing.

Have a great day.

PS  Don’t forget your coat. If you haven’t got one then you can buy a plastic poncho for very little in Milford Sound or in Te Anau.

If you are going to Milford, there is a five minute walk from the car park to the boat and with no rain coat you will get wet. Another option is the driver can drop their passengers off at the terminal so only he or she will get wet.

PPS take good care of your camera and if needed, sacrifice your coat or poncho to keep it dry, you will need it.