Less than a week after reopening city boat launches at Pioneer Park, McArthur Island, and Thompson Drive, the city of Kamloops has closed things up indefinitely once again because of rising river levels.

Its as the Thompson River – which is at the highest level it’s been all season as of this morning (7.55 metres) – is unsafe for boating.

“This has been an unusual freshet season that has been very challenging to predict” said Greg Wightman, Utility Services Manager for the City of Kamloops. “However, we continue to work our flood plan and respond accordingly to changes in weather and river level projections.”

The city is working with Emergency Management BC, the BC River Forecast Centre, and Environment Canada to monitor river levels and flood projections for the Thompson Rivers. Residents in low-lying areas are being told to protect their properties, with sand and sandbags available at fire stations through the city.

Speaking to NL News, Wightman says the snow melt went far better than expected, which led to the Thompson Rivers peaking a couple of weeks ago.

“Generally speaking, once those two rivers have peaked based on the snowmelt, you don’t see another peak driven by rain that goes any higher than those peaks,” he said.

“Unfortunately this year with the amount of rain we’ve been having over the past couple of weeks here, we are now seeing projections over the course of this weekend that are going to drive the rivers higher than we’ve seen to date yet this year.”

Just yesterday, the BC River Forecast Centre reinstated a high streamflow advisory for the North Thompson, while maintaining a similar advisory for the South Thompson River.

River Forecast Centre Section Head Dave Campbell previously told NL News that the worst of the flood risk in Kamloops appears to be over, but notes that we’re still a few weeks away from the flood risk ending.

– With files from Jeff Andreas