Quesnel’s Emergency Services Coordinator says the Fraser River will likely go up quite a bit by the end of the week.
Sylvain Gauthier says it went up and then down again over the last three or four days…
“I noticed that the Fraser went down slightly overnight last night and yesterday, but over the next couple of days with some nice warm weather coming back, and the freezing level getting higher, we can expect the Fraser to go up slightly or a couple of more feet.”
Gauthier says we’re still waiting for the upper snowpack to start to melt…
“It has been cooler, just average, so we haven’t really hit the high elevation snowpack.  Basically right now from what my understanding is that the low elevation is basically all gone, the mid elevation is 50 to 70 percent gone, so as we start getting into the warm temperature then we will start hitting the high elevation.”
Gauthier says they check the levels of the Fraser daily…
“Between myself and certain members of public works, we go have a look at certain key areas and see what the level is, but we haven’t even come close to our markers yet.”
Gauthier says he also has weekly meetings with the BC River Forecast Centre right now.
The Fraser typically peaks by late May or early to mid June, so Gauthier says they are pretty much on schedule at least so far this year.