By Tom Mark

Watching The Snow Pack

Mar 9, 2018 | 1:17 PM

Forecasters will be keeping closer eye on the mountain snow pack over the next few weeks as winter starts to loosen some of its grip.

The snow pack in the Okanagan is now at 141 per cent of normal.

Dave Campbell with the River Forecast Centre says last year at this time it was 86 per cent of normal.

“We’ve got about the same amount of snow now as we did at the very peak of the snow accumulation last year, kind of into that late April period. We’ve got about the same amount of snow right now up in the hills.”

Which is a concern with another 6 to 8 weeks of possible snow accumulation before we really start to get into the melt season.

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But it’s too soon to say if we could have a repeat of last year.

“It’s very difficult to look at precipitation forecasts beyond a couple of weeks even and have much confidence in them, so you’re kind of just left with that piece of uncertainty about what will play out.”

Campbell notes that last year was a year of extremes with a heavy snow pack at the end of April with two of the wettest months in history.

A lot of what happens could also depend on the amount of actual moisture in that snow.

“Yeah. That’s what we look at. We take a measurement we call the snow-water equivalent. It’s really just measuring, it would be the same if you just melted all the water. If it was a big rainstorm we will measure it in the depth of the water that is over the landscape.”

Campbell says while they can predict the volume of runoff, it’s difficult to predict the rate of runoff.

That’s going to depend on how warm it gets, how quickly and whether we get heavy rain.

Campbell says the next bulletin coming out in early April will be the one they use as the main benchmark for seasonal flood risk because we’ll be at or close to the full snow pack by then.

by Tom Mark