However, over the past few days the weather has been warm with sunny days, drawing many people to the lake to boat, kayak and swim.
The Clutha River at Clyde is also very high.
It has been hovering around the first flood warning level (825 cumecs) over the past month and exceeded it twice — the first time on October 25 (1250 cumecs) and again on November 11 (1520 cumecs).
After several heavy rainfalls last week, Lake Wānaka reached its first flood level alert of 279.4m at 5am Sunday but had dropped to 279.1m by noon yesterday.
Wānaka Lake Swimmers Club committee member and Ruby Swim director Eddie Spearing said his regular Sunday morning swim was a "mucky" and "smelly" experience, and the water was still clogged with lots of driftwood and debris yesterday.
Driftwood had piled up on the shores of the lake, while the mouth of Bullock Creek at the Dinosaur Park had been swamped.
"I couldn’t see anything on the bottom of the lake between the swim buoy line, where you can see it normally.
"There was a lot of sticks and debris in the water and it was quite smelly — a big pond smell, the smell of all that stuff, all the dog s... around the lake and other crap that people have left lying around beside the lake.
"That is all just in the water now," Mr Spearing said.
One thing the recent rain did not do was chill the lake.
The water temperature has been steadily creeping up from the winter lows of under 9°C to reach 13.9°C on Sunday and 14°C yesterday.
Lake Wānaka alert levels
Level, noon November 11 279.1m
High lake level 279.4m
Possible flooding in Wānaka 280.0m
Historical flood, May 2010 279.4m
Historical flood, November 1999 281.3m
Source: Otago Regional Council water monitoring site
