Quesnel’s Emergency Services Coordinator says there are already some concerning signs that there could be flooding when the spring freshet hits early next year.
Sylvain Gauthier says the main concerns is that we had a very wet summer which has pushed the water table up on Baker Creek and the Quesnel and Fraser Rivers…
“Now we’re getting into the cold season and everything is going to start to freeze and the prediction is that we’re going to have another winter similar to last year, so if that is the case and we have the same amount of snow, and knowing that the water table is high, we could probably expect a pretty busy spring freshet coming up.”
Gauthier says, as always, everything will depend on the weather we get this winter and then how fast the melt is in the spring…
“If we have a lot of snow and we have a very slow increase of temperature increase in the spring, and we have a slow melt then we will be fine.  If we have lots of snow and then we have a high rise in temperature that just goes up quickly and stays up in the spring, then we could be in trouble.”
He says they won’t really know what they’re facing until we get into late February or early March…
“Then we’ll start knowing how much snow we have at higher elevations and start having a better feel, a better idea as to what it might look like.  Until winter is just about done, right now it’s just a guessing game, and we don’t want to play guessing games, so to me it’s just wait until winter has passed and then we’ll know more and we can prepare for it.”
Gauthier says an average winter for temperatures and the amount of snow we get would go a long way in helping to prevent any flooding.
He says the water levels along Baker Creek and the Quesnel and Fraser Rivers that were unseasonably last week have started to come down a bit, a trend he expects to continue as long as we don’t get a lot more rain.