Image Credit: FILE PHOTO
April 07, 2017 - 2:27 PM
KAMLOOPS - If the water in a lake or river near you seems a little high, that’s not your eyes playing a trick on you.
After a longer than usual winter, with late season dumps of snow, the province is reporting higher than normal levels in snowpack and stream flows.
In the South Thompson, North Thompson and Okanagan basins, snowpack is roughly five percent higher than normal, meaning normal season flood risk this spring, according to a bulletin from the B.C. River Forecast Centre.
While above normal, the North Thompson, South Thompson and Okanagan basins are closer to the average this year when compared to last year in terms of snowpack, which saw the Okanagan basin much higher, at 131 per cent and the two Thompson basins around 112 per cent.
On average the province was only slightly colder than normal, roughly 0.5 Celsius to 2 C below normals, but Southern B.C. was much wetter than normal, with areas recording 150 to 200 per cent of the normal March precipitation. The combination means an increase in snowpack over the month.
At the beginning of March the province was at 85 per cent of normal snowpack, but the wet month brought that to 98 per cent by April 1.
The River Forecast Centre says runoff will be near normal across the province, expect in the Nicola and Okanagan where higher than normal seasonal runoff is expected.
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News from © iNFOnews, 2017