Following a weekend that saw more areas in Alberta put under a high streamflow advisory and a helicopter used to airlift some campers away from where river waters were rising dangerously high, the manager for Alberta’s river forecast team spoke out about the situation on Monday.
“Most of the key locations along those river basins have peaked and are falling right now – Peace River is falling, Athabasca at Whitecourt is falling, the North Saskatchewan River in Edmonton is falling – all of them crested late yesterday or on Saturday,” Bernard Trevor told reporters in Edmonton. “One that we’re waiting for right now is water levels on the Athabasca River to move downstream towards the town of Athabasca – we’re expecting river levels at Athabasca to peak tomorrow at 1,800 cubic metres per second.
“Towards the eastern part of the province, we are expecting rivers to crest in Athabasca and move downstream but in the rest of Alberta, we’re not expecting any concerns.”
READ MORE: Much of Alberta currently under high streamflow advisory
Trevor said the province normally issues high streamflow advisories when river or stream levels rise rapidly. He said the advisory is not a projection of major flooding, but an indicator for the public to be aware conditions are changing and to be cautious near waterways.
“This is all resulting from the major rainfall that we had late last week from Thursday evening into Saturday,” Trevor said.
“We received between 40 to 80mm of rain in west-central Alberta and that’s causing river levels to rise.”
Trevor said winter snowpack has generally not been an issue in terms of rising water levels across the province, except for some areas in the Bow River basin.
“We’re seeing some active snowmelt going on there but that’s been occurring for a number of weeks since May – that’s why we have the high streamlfow advisory on the Bow River above Cochrane – and because we also felt there was some rain forecast as well,” he said. “Typically in the Bow River basin, there’s still snow left in the mountains, half the stations are reporting snowpack still available, however, it’s not really the cause of flooding in Alberta. We’re looking for those major rainstorms that come in from the Pacific Ocean and create the large rain storms.”
The government said elevated water levels on the North Saskatchewan River could affect some boat launches and docks, however, they added city officials would be the ones to decide whether to close any boat launches. As of 2 p.m., the river was flowing at a rate for 1,067 cubic metres per second. On average, the river flows at about 241 cubic metres per second although streamflows can be faster, usually peaking in July.
“When rivers start to come up higher than normal, we want the public to be safe,” Trevor said.
READ MORE: Helicopters look for boater missing on northern Alberta river amid ‘dangerous search conditions’
For a list of all Alberta river basin warnings and advisories, click here.