There’s more snow in alpine areas near Kamloops than what new data suggests.

In its snowpack bulletin to Jan. 1, released last week, the North Thompson snow basin was one per cent above normal.

But hydrologist Jonathan Boyd says that may just be because of where snow measurement stations are located.

“The Quesnel region, an area that does border with the North Thompson, it’s coming in at 129 per cent of normal. And then also the Upper Fraser East, another area that borders the North Thompson, it’s 117 per cent of normal. So it could be that the North Thompson is actually skewed down a little bit based on the location of the stations.”

Meanwhile, the Middle Fraser snow basin, west of Kamloops, is the lowest snow basin in the province, at seven per cent below normal.

“The Middle Fraser is just a very geographically diverse and large area. Further into our tables, we do break it down a little bit. And part of the reason is the Bridge Region, west of the Fraser (River) is operated by BC Hydro. That particular region is actually the lowest in the whole province,” Boyd says, noting the Bridge region near Lillooet has a snowpack that’s 21 per cent below normal.

Boyd says the Lower Thompson is part of the Middle Fraser, which he says includes everything that feeds into the Thompson River, downstream of Kamloops Lake.

“The entire area, and then areas of Cache Creek, the Deadman River, the Bonaparte River, it’s at 152 per cent of normal. But the big asterisk for that one is that we typically will have eight sites measured for that one, but for January 1st only one is input into the snow basin.”

Boyd says specifically, Lac Le Jeune measured at 52 per cent above normal as of New Year’s Day.

Province-wide, B.C. had an average snowpack of eight per cent above normal as of Jan. 1.

(Feature Photo: Twitter: @susanmark3000)