As the North Thompson is set to crest soon and the South Thompson not that far behind, officials with the City of Kamloops are optimistic that the worst case scenario won’t be happening.
Speaking on the NL Morning News, Kamloops Utility Services Manager, Greg Wightman said conditions have been favourable.
“We’ve had about as perfect weather conditions we can imagine here given the extremely high snow pack that we have. We just haven’t see that spike in temperatures so we’ve had a real gradual melting of the snow,” he said.
“Right now our focus is on predominantly on the South Shuswap. Looking at the weather system that’s rolling through the Kootenay’s and bringing some rain to the Shuswap area, so about 10 to 25 mm of rain has fallen in the past 24 hours about another 10 expected. Certainly that’s something we’re going to be keeping our eye on just so see how the South Thompson responds to that.”
With potential of just a little rain in the forecast, Wightman notes it is not the time to put our feet up.
“This is what we’ve been saying since about the May Long weekend where we’re just in this period of being really susceptible to extreme weather event, particularly rain and the forecast since really the middle of May has just been extremely favourable for us and it looks to be that way for the next few weeks, a little bit of rain in the forecast nothing major maybe five to ten mm,” he said.
“Heading into next week, we’re looking at a bit of a dryer and kind of return to more seasonable temperatures which is exactly what we need right now.”
As far as the North Thompson goes, Wightman says they’re closely monitoring the Boss Mountain Mine Snow Index.
“That’s the snow index that seems to be, about a week after that becomes snow free is typically when we see the North Thompson peak and the melt of snow up at Boss Mountain Mine has been very steady, very gradual. We’re probably about a day or two of that being snow free,” he said.
“Tack a week onto that and we’re into the middle of next week for the North Thompson to potentially be peaking and the concern at that point is what the South is going to do and hopefully those two rivers don’t peak at the same time because it does increase the elevation of the water.”
If you do live in a higher risk area, Wightman says now is not the time for complacency.
“Just remain extremely vigilant right now,” he said.
“Obviously there’s a lot of ground out there. We’ve got crews that are doing inspections of the structure and dykes and what have you but really we need the entire community to be very vigilant right now and just report any issues that you see to our civic operations line. Anything that is out there, call it in, let us get out and have a look at it. Hopefully we can be a little pro-active in that case and respond before the river does start to rise.”
Wightman reminds us there is opportunity to get sand bags if your property is vulnerable.
“If you’re a homeowner on living on a waterfront property, the time to try and do some sandbagging, if you think that may be necessary is now, it’s not when you start to see water overtopping the river bank.”
For information on sand and sandbags, go here.
