Drought continues to be a concern for the Cariboo this spring and summer.
Dave Campbell, the Head of the BC River Forecast Centre, says some areas don’t even have snow.
“We look at the plateau areas around Quesnel, Williams Lake, up to Prince George, we’re seeing that snow is gone. It was gone early, and there wasn’t a lot to start with, so we’re starting to see that pressure from the lack of runoff into the rivers that stream flow is getting quite low.”
Campbell says the concern for drought is more elevated in the plateau area.
He says the Quesnel Snow Basin Index is at 52 percent of normal.
That compares to 100 percent of normal at the same time last year.
“It’s I would say quite concerning. We’re starting to see that pickup in the stream flow itself. We know that the region generally is really part of a bullseye of persisted dry conditions that we’ve seen extending back a couple of years now, and that’s starting to play a roll in terms of the recharge in terms of groundwater, the base flow in the rivers has really dropped and with the low snow pack I think we really are setting up, it’s a fairly big concern through the Cariboo for drought as we come into the summer.”
Campbell says the province has launched a new web portal, droughtportal.gov.bc.ca, which provides all sorts of drought information, including the provincial drought levels and what people can do to prepare for drought.