A Hydrologist with the BC River Forecast Centre says the Cariboo region is in excellent shape when it comes to snowpack levels.
Jonathan Boyd says it was at 87 percent of normal in the Quesnel watershed on February 1st, down from 101 percent in January, but still in an optimal situation at reducing the different hazards.
“There is less risk of snowmelt related flooding, but then the snowpack is still high enough that it’s not a drastic risk for drought or of course wildfires often associated with drought. Historically when I’ve seen kind of that 90 percent, 85 to 90 percent, is actually kind of the best situation from a hazard standpoint.”
Boyd says the snowpack in the Chilcotin is at just 33 percent of normal but he says that can be very misleading.
“For the Chilcotin area, it is always a little bit tricky to come up with a great number there. I believe it was just one site that was measured for February 1st and it came in at a snow depth of 8 centimeters, so it’s just a really small amount of snow. March 1st is usually the best handle of what’s going on in the Chilcotin, but at 31 percent of normal it’s one of the lower ones, just because of how low the snow is normally too, but it can also be one of the ones that can be ridiculously high, so it’s not necessarily the easiest one to determine.”
Boyd says the Cariboo is not quite out of the woods yet though when it comes to potential flooding.
“It is a La Nina year and means temperatures can be on the cooler side for the rest of winter and potentially into the start of spring, and often in La Nina years we can see a little bit more snow accumulate in March and April, and a slight delay in the melt.”
Boyd says the Cariboo normally has about two thirds of the snow it will get by February 1st.
He says the Cariboo is in much better shape than the province as a whole.
“The big story overall for the whole province is just how dry of a January it was overall, and from a provincial level it went from 87 percent of normal out of all stations down to 72 percent of normal.”
Boyd says it is very unlikely that BC will even get close to back to 100 percent of normal.
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