The Coldwater River has been in a level four drought for much of the summer, but the River Forecast Centre says that could change soon.

Hydrologist Jonathan Boyd says Coldwater is notorious for being pretty flashy in the summer where flows can rise and fall quite quickly. He says on Saturday, water flow was at about 0.28 cubic metres per second.

“The critical environmental flow threshold is at 0.43 , so it was significantly below that. And just over the last couple of days it’s been going up and is above 0.6 now. So the likelihood is it is juts going to continue to improve in the next week.”

There is rain in the forecast for the Coldwater area this weekend which could help lift it out of that severe drought rating.

Boyd says if we have another rain system or two back to back that would put it in a good situation.

Even if we have some warm weather for a week or two it won’t really have an effect because the flows have rebounded so much. It is still status quo right now.”

He adds that communities in the area have been very cooperative when it comes to helping conserve water.

“We’ve had great buy in this year where everyone has voluntarily stepped in to shut off water. So, the hope is that we’re moving into that territory now where we can move off of level four.”