(STEVE ARSTAD / iNFOnews.ca)

There’s a good chance that heat records will be broken this weekend as a ridge of high pressure moves into the southern Interior region.

While record-breaking, the temperatures are not likely to trigger heat warnings since those are only issued if temperatures are expected to reach or surpass 35 Celsius for at least two days.

Kamloops is forecast to reach 32 C on Saturday and 34 C on Sunday. Existing records are 35 C for both days, set in 1924. In Kelowna, it’s expected to reach 31 C on Saturday (old record is 31.6 C) and 32 C (old record was 30.2 C) on Sunday. Both records were set in 2018.

Environment Canada meteorologist Bobby Sekhon told iNFOnews.ca it's going to get hot this weekend.

“Gradually though the work week next week temperatures will come down. It won’t be a drastic drop in temperature but they will come down. Definitely it will remain warm but not quite as hot as this weekend," Sekhon said.

That drop means it’s highly unlikely that temperatures will be 35 C or above, which would trigger a heat warming. The heat, however, comes with other risks.

Flooding in some areas of B.C., such as Cache Creek and Okanagan Indian Band land on the west side of Okanagan Lake, eased over the weekend because of cool weather without much rain. That will change with next weekend’s heat.

“We know there is a lot of snow left in the mountains,” Dave Campbell, head of the BC River Forecast Centre, said during a news briefing Monday, May 8.

“We’re about a quarter of the way through the provincial seasonal melt, which is very fast. We’re probably two or three times quicker for the melt this year from the hot weather we were experiencing during May," Campbell said.

"During the next period of warming, we’re anticipating an additional round of snow melt. We can see another period of elevated flood risk in the province and bringing on potentially new areas that have not experienced flooding in the past.”

The wildfire risk will also climb sharply.

There are currently 62 active wild fires burning B.C., five of which are out of control. Most of those are in the northeast corner of the province.

“What we’ll see over the course of the next five to seven days is that hazard really trend throughout the province,” Cliff Chapman, director of wildfire operations for the BC Wildfire Service, said during the same news briefing. “The potential for wildfires to start is going to increase from, really just being in the northeast now, to be widespread throughout the province.”

It's difficult to forecast what precipitation will fall. There's a chance of showers in Kamloops, Vernon, Kelowna and Penticton over the next couple of days.

There’s no further rain forecast through the weekend but Sekhon noted that late May and into June is typically the wettest time of the year in the Thompson-Okanagan.

Whatever happens with this weekend’s temperatures, they will fall well short of the 2021 heat dome when Kamloops hit 47.3 C and Kelowna reached 45.7 C on June 29.

READ MORE: One more day of the heat wave pushes Okanagan and Canadian records even higher

“There's going to be a strong ridge of high pressure for this time of year, giving some hot temperatures,” Sekhon said.

“It’s not going to be the same situation as we saw in the end of June 2021 event, which was dubbed the heat dome. It’s not going to be the same extreme of heat as we’re really still in May. Nevertheless, we will see temperatures 10 C to 15 C above normal.”

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