Free tool
Campsite Elevation & Temperature Adjuster
Convert a town forecast into the temperature your camp will actually get.
Camp day estimate
14.1°C
Genuine overnight low
14.1°C
How the number was built
- Climb of 600 m above the forecast point
- Lapse cooling: −3.9 °C (0.65 °C per 100 m)
- Clear-sky radiative drop on top: −0 °C
- 18 °C − 3.9 °C = 14.1 °C at the swag
All calculations run on our servers from the values you enter — nothing is stored.
Please note — Adjusted temperatures are planning estimates, not forecasts. Alpine and high-country weather changes fast, and road closures, snow, fire bans and severe wind warnings override any modelled number — always check the Bureau and the park's own alerts immediately before travelling, and never rely on a single tool's figure in genuinely severe conditions.
The Bureau forecast is issued for a weather station, and the weather station is not your campsite. It sits at the local airport or showground, at that place's elevation, in that place's breeze. Move twenty kilometres and six hundred metres uphill and the number on the app is describing a different night entirely. This adjuster closes that gap.
Two effects do nearly all of the work. The first is simple height: air cools as it rises, on average about six and a half tenths of a degree per hundred metres. Climb from the coast to the tablelands and the drop is immediate arithmetic. The second is the quieter killer. Clear calm nights, when the ground radiates its heat into space and the air touching it follows, adding a few more degrees of cold that never appear in any town forecast.
The result gives you a day estimate and an overnight low for the camp itself. That overnight low is the number to feed into the sleeping bag calculator. This tool's output is the input that makes the rest of your cold-night planning honest.
Get this pair right and the two biggest comfort failures of Australian camping. The under-rated sleeping bag and the cotton layer at five degrees. Both stop being surprises.
The lapse rate, minus a blanket
Pressure falls with height, and air that expands as it rises cools while doing so. Outdoors, in the temperatures and latitudes Australians camp in, the average cooling works out at about 0.65 °C for every hundred metres of climb. Camp six hundred metres above the forecast town and the height alone takes nearly four degrees off before anything else happens.
Then the sky gets involved. On a clear, still night the ground loses heat directly to space, a process called radiative cooling, and the thin layer of air above it loses heat with it. Nothing is stirring the mix and nothing is reflecting the heat back down. The result is that the real camp low lands one to three degrees below what pure height arithmetic predicts.
Cloud and wind are the anti-blanket for that effect. Cloud reflects long-wave heat back to the ground, and wind mechanically mixes warmer air down from above. Either one switches radiative cooling mostly off — which is why the windy night at the same temperature often feels warmer than the still one.
A worked example
Jindabyne is forecast to reach a low of two degrees, sitting at about seven hundred metres. Your camp near Charlotte Pass sits at roughly sixteen hundred, and the forecast shows a clear sky with a light breeze.
The height difference is nine hundred metres, so the lapse rate takes off five point nine degrees. Two minus five point nine leaves minus three point nine. A light breeze lets almost all of the radiative cooling through, subtracting another three degrees, for an expected camp low of about minus seven.
The town forecast said two degrees. The camp is around seven degrees below zero. That gap is the whole reason this tool exists. And it is the difference between a summer bag being fine and a three-season bag being the wrong purchase. Feed that minus seven into the sleeping bag calculator before booking the trip.
Getting the inputs right
Find the town's forecast low for the actual night you camp, not the weekend average. Then find both elevations: the Bureau lists station heights. And your camp's height is on any topographic map or the booking page of a parks site. Guessing the camp height within a hundred metres costs you less than a degree, which is well inside the tool's own honesty.
Choose the sky by cloud forecast wording. Clear or sunny-then-clear means clear. Scattered showers or partly cloudy means partly. Overcast and raining means cloudy, and the radiative penalty disappears almost entirely. Wind is the forecast wind for the night, not the day. Valleys often drop to calm after dusk even when the ridge above was howling.
If your camp is a frost hollow. A pocket at the bottom of rising ground. Add one to three degrees of extra cold on top of the result. Cold air is denser than warm air, drains downhill at night and pools exactly where the scenic flat campsites are.
Using the camp low you get back
The overnight low is a shopping number. Put it into the sleeping bag temperature calculator as the forecast low and let that tool size the bag rating, the mat value and the margin. Do not shop from the town temperature again; you now know the town is a different climate than your camp.
The day estimate matters for a different reason. Morning starts at the camp low and climb the same lapse ladder in reverse as the day warms. So the daytime number tells you what the ten o'clock walk feels like at height. It is also the number that decides whether the dew on the tent fly at dawn is a nuisance or a soaked boot.
When the gap between town and camp surprises you, it is usually correct. The classic Australian example is every snow-season trip. The coast sits at twelve degrees while the plateau your camp lives on is at negative four in the same weather system. Because the system arrived with cold air aloft and the height took both halves of the swing.
Inversions: when the valley beats the slope
On still nights, cold pooled in the valley floor can make the bottom colder than a camp two hundred metres up the slope. The lapse rate is an average, not a law. If the forecast is clear and dead calm, treat the flat-site number as the pessimistic one.
What this model leaves out
Lapse rates vary with the weather system. Very cold airmass days compress the profile and humid tropical days stretch it. So the 0.65 figure is the middle of a range rather than a constant. For the heights Australian camps actually use. A few hundred to a thousand metres. The error is typically inside a degree and a half, which is well matched to camping tolerances.
Aspect, ground cover and proximity to water all tune the local result. A north-facing site under black rock will run a few degrees warmer at night than a south-facing forest flat with the same elevation. The tool handles the two dominant effects — height and sky — and the rest is site selection, which you control.
This is not an alpine forecast substitute. Above the treeline in the Snowy Mountains or Tasmania's central highlands in winter, real mountain weather services beat any generic model. Use this tool to size gear and pick sites; use the Bureau and the park's own alerts to decide whether to go at all.
The formula
Camp low = town low − (height gain × 0.65 °C per 100 m) − clear-calm radiative cooling
- 0.65 °C / 100 m
- The environmental lapse rate: rising air expands and cools, and this is the average rate it cools at in temperate conditions.
- Radiative cooling
- Under a clear calm sky the ground dumps its heat to space and the near-surface air follows it down — worth up to three extra degrees of cold.
- Cloud and wind
- Cloud acts as a blanket and wind stirs the air, both of which shut down radiative cooling. Clear and calm is the coldest combination in camping.
Quick elevation adjustments at a glance
| Climb above town | Lapse-rate drop | Feeling with clear calm night |
|---|---|---|
| 200 m | 1.3 °C | 1–3 °C colder than the town forecast |
| 500 m | 3.3 °C | 4–6 °C colder than the town forecast |
| 800 m | 5.2 °C | 6–8 °C colder than the town forecast |
| 1,200 m | 7.8 °C | 9–11 °C colder than the town forecast |
| Frost hollow, same height | 0 to −3 °C extra | Cold pools; lowest ground is coldest ground |
Key terms
- Environmental lapse rate
- The average rate the atmosphere cools with height — near 0.65 °C per 100 m in temperate conditions, which is what this tool applies.
- Radiative cooling
- Heat leaving the ground straight to space under a clear sky. It is why clear cold nights are colder than the forecast low suggests.
- Frost hollow
- Low ground where cold night air drains and collects. Camps there can sit several degrees colder than the surrounding hillside.
- Temperature inversion
- A layer of cold air trapped under warmer air on still nights. Slope camps can be warmer than valley camps during one.
- Cloud blanket
- The insulating effect of cloud cover, reflecting escaping heat downward and holding night temperatures close to the day's mildness.
Pro tips
- Check the camp's elevation once and save it in your notes — most parks list it, and every future trip planning from that site gets faster.
- When the choice is a flat by the creek or a bench an hour's walk above it, take the bench on clear nights. Cold air drainage is worth two degrees.
- Run this tool and the sleeping bag calculator as a pair in the same minute — the camp low is the bag number.
- In the snow season, cross-check the Kosciuszko alpine forecast against the result; if they disagree, the alpine one wins.
× Common mistakes
- Shopping a sleeping bag from the town forecast and freezing at an uphill campsite.
- Reading the stillest night of the week as the mildest — calm clear nights are the coldest camp nights.
- Booking the prettiest flat by the riverbed for winter and discovering the frost pool first.
- Treating one degree of adjustment as noise and ignoring the ten-degree gap it predicts.
Frequently asked questions
Is the 0.65 per hundred metres figure reliable?+
For planning purposes, yes. It is the standard environmental lapse rate for temperate, unsaturated conditions. And Australian camp heights usually differ by under a thousand metres from the forecast town. The error band is a degree or so at the end of the day. This is exactly the band where a sleeping bag rating still clearly fits or clearly does not.
Why is a clear calm night colder than a cloudy windy one?+
Because heat leaves the ground in two ways: radiation to space and mixing with surrounding air. Cloud reflects the radiation back, and wind drags warmer air down from above. Take both away and the ground near the surface cools to well below the free-air forecast. This is where dew, frost and surprising zero readings come from.
Does this work for the other direction — descending to a hotter camp?+
Yes, and the arithmetic is just as clean. A camp six hundred metres below the forecast town sits roughly four degrees warmer before sky effects, which matters in summer as much as winter. The desert park pattern is exactly this. The plateau camp is the mild one and the valley floor is the one that starts the day at thirty-five.
My camp is right by the ocean. Does elevation even matter?+
At sea level the lapse rate is irrelevant, but the marine layer is not. Coastal camps under clear skies can still run a few degrees below an inland forecast at dawn because sea breezes and the cold water offset it. Use the coastal forecast for the nearest point, set clear sky, and treat the result as a mild-cold guide rather than an alpine one.
What is the link between this and the sleeping bag tool?+
A direct hand-off, and the intended workflow. This tool answers the question the bag calculator asks as its first input: what low will the bag actually face at this site. Get the camp low right here, enter it there. And the rating you shop for matches the night you will sleep through instead of the night the airport had.
How we built this calculator
- Written by
- Track & Canopy Editorial Team — Trip Planning Desk
- How we calculate
- The model applies the standard environmental lapse rate and the well-documented effect of cloud and wind on radiative cooling, the same two factors Australian alpine and parks guidance tells visitors to plan around when comparing town forecasts with elevated campsites.
- Sources & standards
- Last reviewed
- 15 October 2026
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Track & Canopy — Practical gear advice for Australian conditions. Estimates are planning aids, not engineering advice.