Snowpack levels are very, very low across the province, including here in the Cariboo.
Jonathan Boyd, a Hydrologist with the BC River Forecast Centre, says they are even lower than last year when we experienced a drought.
“Looking at the Cariboo region, the Quesnel Watershed is coming in at 51 percent of normal compared to last year at 78 percent of normal. That includes one station, Granite Mountain which has about 27 years of records for January 1st, that measured at an all-time low.”
Boyd says the Granite Mountain station is near Gibralter Mines.
He says the Chilcotin was at zero percent of normal but that is with just one station being recorded.
Boyd says provincial snowpacks as a whole are at just 56 percent of normal, down from 82 last year.
We asked Boyd how concerned we should be about drought and wildfires this summer.
“I think this is a good time to be prepared and ready for the possibility and not necessarily be surprised if we end up in a similar situation to last year. As bad as last year was the one caveat that I would often say was that the snowpack actually wasn’t that bad across the province by the time we got to May 1st. It was a little bit below normal, but it certainly wasn’t drastically low. So last year could have been worse if the snowpack was low, and this year we do have that low snowpack.”
Boyd says they used the term ‘extremely low’ in the January report so they are not taking the numbers lightly.
He says typically about half of the snowpack has accumulated by January so there is still some time for it to come up, but he says he doubts that it will get back to normal.
As always, Boyd says everything still all hinges on weather conditions.
The next snowpack update will be in February.
Something going on in the Cariboo you think people should know about?
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