Flood fears are growing in B.C. as the weather warms, and officials have said that areas that have already been hit hard are the most vulnerable.
Ongoing snowpack accumulation in the southern part of the province means regions like the Similkameen, Okanagan, Boundary area and the Kootenays are at risk of flooding, according to Dave Campbell, head of the B.C. River Forecast Centre.
The snowpacks are near or above 150 per cent of normal in the Upper Fraser West, Okanagan, Skagit, Boundary and Similkameen regions,
READ MORE: Snowpack in Okanagan still 150 per cent of normal
“Areas that would normally be melting [in] early April are just starting to now and we really haven’t seen any melt in the upper elevations now so we are expecting that to turn the corner as we get into the warmer weather later this week,” Campbell said.
Residents in the Oliver area are still out of their homes due to high water. The temperature reached nearly 20 degrees Celsius in the area on Monday.
“Those areas where we already have issues, we expect the potential for those to exacerbate, as well as other, local tributary streams to come online,” Campbell said.
“As for high elevation snowpack that really feeds the big rivers of the province, it’s a little early for that, we are still a few weeks out.”
There’s also potential for increased runoff in areas burned by wildfires in 2017.
“Areas in and around the central Interior, where the Elephant Hill wildfire and the Plateau fires that happened, are in a similar elevation melt,” Campbell said.
“The next week might be a little bit of a test for those areas to see what the impact of those fires may be.”
Snowpacks are near-record highs in some parts of B.C.’s Interior, according to Global News meteorologist Mark Madryga, with most regions from the U.S. border up to Prince George gradually heating up through the week.
Temperatures could reach the mid-20’s, possibly as high as 27 degrees in the southern Interior by the end of the week.
“This high pressure ridge is the strongest we’ve had in a long time so an extended period of warm weather,” Madryga said.
“If there is a silver lining to sort of slow the snow melt during the week across the B.C. Interior it’s that the nights will still be cool and in the single digits for lows especially in the mountains where the snow is so while we have very warm afternoons, it cools at night.”
~ With files from Geoff Hastings and Kelly Hayes