The alpine snowpack in BC is 16 per cent below normal but forecasters say the snowpack is rapidly climbing in some places.

River Forecast Centre section head Dave Campbell says that percentage is as of Jan. 1 and significant storms have come through southern B.C. since then.

“It’s still early days. We typically have about half the snow that we get for the year by January 1st. So that outlook can change quite a lot, but if we were to get seasonal weather or if the patterns are continuing like what we get – say if we get another few weeks of stormy weather – that can really bump those numbers up. So things can change for sure.”

Campbell says a key message is that there is more uncertainty this year for forecasting snowfall for the rest of the winter. He says we’re in a “neutral El Nino condition,” which he says is less common than El Nino or La Nina.

“We’re not at the point quite yet where we’re quite concerned that the snowpack is quite high, but it’s certainly trending towards that way as we get to some of the areas through the Interior ranges. The mountains feeding into the Thompson, for example, or the Upper Fraser. As they’re sitting for January 1st, they’re not super high but they’re starting to nudge there, again with that influence of storms in the last week.”

Meanwhile, the snowpack is 12 per cent above normal in the North Thompson and 17 per cent above normal in the South Thompson. Campbell says in the South Thompson, the snowpack level has likely climbed by five-to-10 per cent in recent days because of heavy snowfall.

The reading is much lower in the “Middle Fraser” region at 66 per cent, which includes Merritt, Lytton, Cache Creek, Ashcroft and many Cariboo communities south of Prince George.

The lowest snowpack in B.C. is the Upper Fraser West, north and west of Prince George, at 37 per cent. The highest is the Boundary region between the Okanagan and West Kootenay, at 121 per cent.