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Environment Canada issues special weather statement, calls for weekend heavy rain

Jun 7, 2018 | 3:56 PM

KAMLOOPS —Environment Canada says the sunny, warm weather this week will give way to a potentially volatile storm system in the Southern Interior this weekend.

The forecaster has issued a special weather statement for the Nicola and Shuswap regions, among others.

Meteorologist Doug Lundquist says a cold, upper low is moving in and threatens to bring a lot of rain in a short period of time.

“It’s going to really cool things off over the next few days. We’ll go from mid-20s today to mid-teens by Sunday. Along with it will come some fairly heavy rains, mostly in the Shuswap to the east and the eastern parts of the Okanagan and Kootenays. But it’s so slow moving, it could easily be one valley further west,” said Lundquist.

“We’re expecting fairly heavy rain. Maybe in the Kamloops area only five to 10 (millimetres). But just east of Kamloops, maybe as high as 20 to 40, and perhaps locally, 50.”

Lundquist says the amount of rain that he’s predicting could cause local infrastructure problems.

“One of my concerns is that if we get embedded thunderstorms, we could get intense rain where it could come down in a short period of time. And that’s the kind of thing that could cause localized flooding in ditches and small creeks.”

Meantime, travellers heading into the high elevation passes might see the return of the white stuff.

But Lundquist says if it does snow, that won’t last.

“On Sunday morning, I wouldn’t be surprised if the freezing level comes down enough that we’ll see a little bit of snow on the webcams on the Coquihalla system. It won’t last long; the sun has so much power this time of year. It’s the highest sun of summer and will melt it really quickly once the sun comes up.”