River forecasters keeping close eye on snowpack

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Skiers and boarders are happy with all the snow still sitting up on our local mountains, but the snowpack in southern BC is being watched closely by the province’s River Forecast Centre.

All that snow could be a double-edged sword as we head into spring and summer.

Dave Campbell, who is the head of the forecast centre, says with a slightly higher than average snowpack for the bottom corner of the province, the river to watch is the mighty Fraser.

“Which drains a lot of the interior of the province. The Fraser Basin right now has a hold of about 110 per cent of normal, so it’s a little above normal but not really into the kind of high areas where we’d be elevated in terms of our concern.”

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However, in the Okanagan, he says late snow and rain last spring on top of the elevated snowpack could spell trouble in a region that saw extensive flooding in 2017. “I think that’s a concern for this year,” he tells NEWS 1130. “If we have a similar pattern like that in the April into May period on top of a much higher snowpack to start with, could certainly create issues.”

Future weather is something Campbell says forecasters have a lot of uncertainty about. He adds that makes it hard to say “which way things will go in terms of how the snow melts.”

But, on the positive side, the snowpack –which is about 10 to 20 per cent higher than the average for this time of year across Southwest BC– could help mitigate the effects of a potentially long dry summer.

“With those big snowpacks, that will help to kind of feed flow through them, so definitely we do see reduced risk and less concern when we do have high snowpacks in terms of the Summer low-flow.”

The Okanagan Lake hit record water levels last year, and forced a number of evacuations.

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