River levels stabilizing and expected to drop
By Shara JJ Cooper
The Boundary area did not get enough rain Monday night to push the rivers past the flooding point. As a result, the BC River Forecast Centre has downgraded the advisory to a “high streamflow” for the Granby River and has ended the advisory for the Kettle and West Kettle rivers as well as the small tributary creeks.
“It’s definitely as high as it is expected to get in the short term,” said Dave Campbell, head of the BC River Forecast Centre. “We think that’s going to be it.”
While the water levels are exected to slowly lower throughout the week, Campbell said extreme weather conditions could turn things around. This could come as either heavy rain or high heat temperatures that would wash the remaining snow into the river passages.
“There is still a reasonable amount of snow on the headwaters,” said Campbell, referring to the snow pillows that melt into the tributory streams. The forecast centre has sensors set up at these locations, which tell them that there is still quite a bit of snow left to melt.
“Maybe 10 to 30 per cent of the snow has melted,” he said, adding that once half of the snow is gone the flood risk diminshes significantly.
In the Boundary area, it’s not unusual to see snow at the higher elevations into the middle of June with some snow still sticking around until July at the highest eleveations.
“There is some snow left but it’s such a small portion it can’t really cause any problems,” said Campbell of any snow left in the summer months.
