Nearly back to normal
Beaches and boat launches are reopening, debris getting cleaned up
Thanh Pham and his daughter, Isabella, 5, were stoked that Tugboat Bay Beach was open on Monday.
“With all the flooding, we didn’t know if it would still be closed,” said Pham.
“But all the aquadams (flood protection that would put up cutting off access to the beach and water) are gone and all the junk (flood-related debris) has been cleaned up.”
Pham and his daughter wore their swimsuits, brought towels, a blanket and beach toys just in case they could get on the sand and in the water.
“If we couldn’t, we were just going to walk the boardwalk, but beach time is much better, especially with this absolutely beautiful summer weather,” he said.
“It was certainly a long, drawn- out winter and spring with all the snow we had and then the flooding.”
Everyone in Kelowna is anxious to get back to normal after this historic flood. But it won’t happen overnight. Flood protection along beaches is being removed as the high-water threat passes, debris littering the waterfront is being cleared up and boat launches are reopening.
But it’s a gradual process, and City of Kelowna crews are working as fast as they can to open some of the most popular beaches and boat launches first.
That means besides Tugboat Bay Beach, the beaches at the north end of City Park, Boyce-Gyro, Cedar Creek, Sarsons and Paul’s Tomb are also open.
The city is updating its website every time another beach or boat launch reopens at Kelowna.ca.
Boat launches currently open include Cook Road, Cedar Creek and one-lane of the two-lane Water Street.
On Monday, Parm Randhawa and Ali Hussian of Surrey were setting off from the Water Street Boat Launch after renting a bowrider from Sun-Wave.
“We hadn’t even heard there’d been flooding in Kelowna,” said Randhawa.
“So we’re lucky we were able to rent today when we just dropped in on our way back from camping in Banff.”
Brett Philp and Colby Martens from Sun-Wave were seeing the two men off.
“It’s good to be getting back to normal,” said Martens.
“We were fine the May long weekend and then for the past six weeks, we’ve only been able to run at about one-third capacity because of the flooding.”
While boaters are still asked to be respectful so as not to cause foreshore damage with boat wake, normal boating activity seemed to resume on the middle of the lake with people waterskiing, wakeboarding and wakesurfing and the tourist parasailing and jetboats out.
Martens said debris doesn’t seem to be an issue for boaters anymore either.
“We’re still telling people to be careful, but most of the branches and dock pieces seem to have found their way to shore,” he said.
Canada Day was the turning point for both flood-fatigued residents and tourists and flooding conditions.
Over the past two weeks, the weather has definitely become summer-like and the level of Okanagan Lake has steadily dropped from its record high of 343.251 metres above sea level on June 9 to 342.983 metres on Monday.
That’s a decline of 26.8 centimetres.
However, the lake is still about 50 centimetres above full pool.
That means it will still be weeks before its completely back to normal.
The excess of water is in contrast to the hot-and-dry conditions that have put the region into a high wildfire hazard rating.