Okanagan snowpack above normal for now
New Year’s readings show snowpack in region’s mountains at 123% of normal, but official says it’s too soon to know if flooding will result
With the early snow we received in November and the record-breaking amount of white stuff we had last month, you’d think the Okanagan Basin’s snowpack would be off the charts.
Yet, readings taken Jan. 1 by the provincial government show the accumulated amount of snow in the mountains surrounding the Okanagan Valley is just 123 per cent of normal.
“The Jan. 1 readings are considered early-season indications, so we don’t totally hang our hat on this,” said Dave Campbell of the River Forecast Centre.
The Victoria-based centre’s name has river in it, not snow, because it is the public agency that monitors streamflows all over the province.
It’s melting snow in the spring and summer that runs off into rivers and streams and ends up in lakes, reservoirs and the Pacific Ocean. As a result, snowpack has an impact on whether there’s flooding or drought, enough water in rivers, lakes and reservoirs for drinking water, irrigation, recreation, fish and wildlife.
One of the 12 snowpack-monitoring stations in the Okanagan Basin that’s considered a benchmark is at the headwaters of Mission Creek high above Kelowna near Big White Ski Resort.
It measured 97 per cent of normal snowpack, which is about one metre of accumulated snow, the equivalent of 220 millimetres of water or rainfall.
Jan. 1 generally marks the halfway mark of the snow season in the Okanagan Basin.
So, technically, if the same amount of snow falls over the next few months, we could have a dangerous snowpack of 246 per cent of normal, which could bring catastrophic flooding.
However, as we all know, the weather is fickle, and so is the snowpack.
We could end the season with less or more than normal snowpack and forecasts for either a flood or a drought, or for a completely average spring and summer.
“There are also other factors that determine how snowpack plays out,” said Campbell.
“There could be risk of flooding if snowpack melts rapidly and it’s combined with heavy rain. Or it could be totally normal if snowpack melts gradually and we don’t have much rain in the spring and early summer.”
Above-average temperatures last spring led to fast snowpack melt.
There was heavy rain at the same time, resulting in flooding of creeks and rivers and an excess of water and debris dumping into Okanagan Lake that didn’t return to normal until early August.
Meanwhile, it hardly rained all summer and the sun beat down relentlessly, causing drought conditions on land while the lake was swollen.
Last year was considered a La Nina weather year, the cool and wet conditions associated with it contributing to Okanagan flooding.
This year is also a La Nina year, so the snowpack could continue to pile up, threatening to cause big melts and possible flooding again.
The Okanagan Basin is the wider area of land including the valley and surrounding peaks that contain the mountain snow, waterways and lakes the melt flows into.