While the flood concerns in Kamloops have dropped a little, the City’s Utility Services Manager says we’re not completely out of the woods just yet.
Greg Wightman tells NL News city staff are monitoring a rain storm that is expected on Monday or Tuesday of next week.
“We see the forecast for that storm changing sometimes a couple times during a day,” he said.
“What we are hearing from Environment Canada is just its going to be really hard to predict exactly where it is going to hit and exactly how much rain is going to come, and what we are hearing from the River Forecast Centre is that ‘your rivers are high and any significant amount of rain would be a concern right now.'”
Wightman says while the rivers have essentially peaked, a significant amount of rain in either the North or South Thompson watershed could cause levels to rise once again.
“We are going to keep our Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) active over the weekend just to make sure that we can monitor conditions,” he added. “We will have crews out doing daily dike inspections throughout the course of the weekend as well just with this continued threat of the potential storm.”
“We’ll see what happens. Environment Canada is having a real difficulty time trying to predict where the storm is going to go.”
Public boat launches in Kamloops will stay closed for the foreseeable future, with Wightman admitting that while not a popular decision, it is a necessary one.
“It is just not safe to be out on the rivers, with the waters as high as they are and as much debris flowing on the river as there is,” Wightman said.
He says it has been a long and concerning freshet season in Kamloops with no end in sight just yet.
“We’ve been extremely concerned about the situation since the May long weekend,” Wightman added, noting Kamloops has so far been “fortunate” in avoiding extreme flooding this year.
“We are a point where the melt has been favourable but because of the amount of snow that had to melt and how late we are in the season, we have been susceptible to extreme weather. With any luck, we’ve survived what could have been a very bad season.”