While parts of the City of Kamloops are under a flood watch, there isn’t a lot of concern when it comes to spring flooding this season.

Utility Services Manager Greg Wightman says City staff are waiting to see how this weekend’s rain impacts levels on both the North and South Thompson rivers.

“Fortunately at this point, it does appear that the cooling temperatures that we’ve seen in the past week, it really offset a lot of that snowmelt so there will be a bit of a bump coming from the rain that’s fallen over the weekend, but with cooler temperatures we’re going to remain in pretty good conditions,” Wightman said Tuesday.

Speaking on NL Newsday, Wightman says while the City has covered some drains near McArthur Island and closed Rivers Trail between Riverside and Pioneer parks, it’s been a “very bizarre freshet season” this spring.

“If you look in April, we were at historically low river levels for that time of year. I mean people walking over to Rabbit Island without getting their feet wet is something that we’re certainly not used to,” he said. “Then with that extremely warm weather that we had in the early part of May, we actually hit historically high levels for that time of year.”

“This year has been really weird. We just haven’t hit the stages that we normally do so a lot of the things that people are used to seeing just haven’t happened. We still have boat launches open. We haven’t removed the railings from the pier at Riverside Park.”

Wightman says both the North and South Thompson rivers are expected to peak in the not-too-distant future.

“The North Thompson typically peaks a little bit before the South and all indications are that we may be at or very near the peak of the North,” he said. “The South typically comes up a little slower and a little later [but] we’re probably a week away from the peak there.”

“Like I say, it just hasn’t got to the levels that it has in recent years where its had to take a lot of action for flood protection.”

As of May 15, the BC River Forecast Centre says the North Thompson snowpack was at 61 per cent of normal while the South Thompson was at 73 per cent of normal.

Wightman also says the Sandman Centre parking lot – which will be home to the Hockey House during Memorial Cup – isn’t expected to flood this year. Riverside Park itself is also not expected to flood owing to new flood protection measures that were in place as of last summer.

“Both those projects at Riverside park and McArthur Island, the construction of private dykes which the public sees as walkways, which is exactly what we wanted them to look like,” Wightman said. “They’ve been huge for us. Its really increased our resiliency and it takes a lot of stress off of folks who are making decisions in EOCs but also it frees up a lot of capacity in our crews who don’t have to go out and put temporary flood protection measures in.”

As for boat launches, Wightman cautions it could still be closed before river levels begin to drop.

“We’re asking anyone who is enjoying the rivers and the warm weather, to be very cautions out there,” he added.

“The launches are open but the rivers are still very high. There is a lot of debris coming down the rivers so just be very cautions if you are using the rivers.”

For the latest on Flooding from the City of Kamloops, go here.