A meteorologist with Environment Canada says the snow falling in Kamloops today won’t stick around for very long.
Doug Lundquist says that’s because of the type of weather pattern that brought the snow with it last night.
“Because it happened mostly at the night time, which is the coldest time of day. There was enough rain and snow mixed that it collected down even to the valley bottom,” he said. “So as we see the week go by, it’s going to improve and melt at the low elevations. So we did have a few centimetres in the valley bottom. It looks like over high terrain it was quite variable.”
Lundquist says forecasters are expecting maybe another couple centimetres of snow to fall today in the valley bottom, and about 10 cm in the higher elevations. With a high of 5 C today, he says the snow is expected to change to rain around noon today and begin melting, with conditions improving as the week progresses.
“Through till probably a high of around 8 C on Friday. Looks like the ridge that’s over us is going to try and break down a couple more times, so maybe once on the weekend, and maybe once later next week,” Lundquist added. “If it’s timed right, we could get more snow like this. But the general pattern is actually quite a mild pattern.”
Environment Canada expects the snow level to rise to 1500 metres this afternoon.
Meanwhile, Kamloops Fire Rescue says it had to respond to five crashes since the snow began falling last night.
Platoon Captain Mike Haines says the most significant call was for a crash on the Trans-Canada Highway which blocked off traffic for a short time around 7 p.m.
“A car struck the rear of a semi around Peterson Creek bridge,” he said. “Semi driver had no injuries, but the driver of the vehicle that the back of the semi had significant injuries and had to be extricated from the vehicle and taken to hospital.”
Haines also says heavy snow also led to two crashes during the morning commute today – one at Shuswap Road and the Yellowhead Highway and one on Barnhartvale Road.
And on the snow clearing front, city staff were at nearly a full complement of workers plowing and sanding Kamloops streets when the storm hit last night.
Streets manager Glen Farrow says the majority of the snow fell between 5 a.m. and 9 a.m. today.
“As the snow ramped up at 5 a.m., crews needed to distribute more evenly across the whole community on arterial roads, but there’s definitely a higher priority on those hills,” Farrow added. “That’s where we see challenges if we are not actively applying sand up in the higher elevations.”
Farrow says it’s not unusual to see a heavy snowfall in mid-November and says all crews and equipment were ready to go.
– With files from Colton Davies
