Less snow in hills than usual

Lower snowpack no reason to fear water shortage yet

Special to The Okanagan Weekend

While Okanagan snowpack levels remain in the normal range, they are lower than they were a month ago.

The latest snowpack report, released Friday by the B.C. River Forecast Centre, shows they had fallen to 86 per cent of normal on Feb. 1 from 94 per cent of normal on Jan. 1.

Across the province, the snowpack was sitting at 97 per cent of normal.

Snowstorms during the first week of January increased the snowpack at higher elevations in B.C. However, the following three weeks saw most of the province under the influence of a high-pressure ridge, resulting in limited precipitation.

February has seen arctic air with cold temperatures and limited snow.

“It’s definitely been trending fairly dry over the past three to four weeks,” said Dave Campbell, head of the River Forecast Centre, noting the trend will probably continue until the middle of February.

Typically by this point in winter, B.C. has accumulated close to twothirds of its snowpack.

The lower snowpack levels aren’t yet a reason to worry about there being enough water over the summer, as Campbell said there is still a fair bit of time for the trend to change direction.

“We’ve got two months left of the period where we would expect to see the opportunity to develop snow,” he said.

In February 2017, the snowpack in the Okanagan was 78 per cent of normal, but wet March weather brought the snowpack to 105 per cent of normal when measured in April, leading to flooding that year.

If levels are below 80 per cent of normal in March, Campbell said, there would be a little more concern about the potential for low flows.

Causes for the lower snowpack include a fairly late start to the snow season.

The other factor has been that the entire season has been generally quite warm, particularly impacting snow levels in the valley bottom and at mid-elevation.

A seasonal forecast predicting an increased likelihood of lower temperatures from February to April may boost the snowpack.

Earlier in the year, it looked like a more classic El Nino year, which tends to mean more warmer weather for B.C. through the winter.

That’s starting to wane with weaker signals now in the ocean circulation patterns and temperatures, leading to more uncertainty about the weather going into spring, particularly temperature.

There is no significant elevated flood risk in the current snowpack across the province, although wet weather during spring runoff can be an influence.