Shane Woodford | Email news tips to shane.woodford@corusent.com
5/8/2012
It all depends on the weather, as the BC River Forecasting Centre updates the flood risk ahead of the seasonal melt.
The centre's Dave Campbell says the positive news is recent cool weather has dropped river levels creating more capacity.
But Campbell adds the snowpacks are still above normal and the seasonal melt is running a couple weeks late.
He said "I would caution that even though we have seen a slight relaxation of the index, it dropped a couple percent, practically speaking it hasn'tchanged the overall risk for the Fraser river that much and we do anticipate that with the snowpacks we have throughout the entire Fraser river that the Fraser river including lower reachs through the Fraser Valley are at an increased risk to flooding this season."
Campbell says snowpack levels are around 2007 levels with snow still falling as recently as a couple days ago.
He says that elevates the flood risk "In particular that includes the upper Fraser basin, the Nechako, the Peace,and the Skeena Nass. And we have high snowpacks as well in the Kootenay and Columbia and all of those regions I just listed we would be anticipating having increased seasonal flood risk due to the snowpack that is available."
Campbell says the warm weather ahead has them concerned "But whether or not we see flooding really is based on the rate that the snow melts which in turn is dependant on the weather and so the weather as we go forward is the key thing that will be determining whether or not we see flooding in any part of the province."
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