File photo (Image Credit: Kent Simmonds)

By Ashley Legassic

NO DROUGHT

Drought concerns ease in Thompson region thanks to a wet summer

Jul 29, 2019 | 3:18 PM

KAMLOOPS — It appears the worst is over for drought fears in the Southern Interior. Both the South and North Thompson basins are in the normal zone — a stark difference from what was originally forecast ahead of this summer.

BC River Forecast Centre hydrologist Jonathan Boyd says it’s been a wetter and cooler July in Kamloops than we’ve seen in previous years.

“We’ve had some very hot and dry July’s in the past few years that has really deteriorated drought conditions, so this year is a little bit of a surprise because going into really late June, we were looking pretty grim province-wide with respect to drought conditions, and ramping up for what could have been one of the worst drought years in recent memory for the province,” Boyd says.

It may have seemed like an extremely wet July in Kamloops, but compared to the historical average the city has only seen roughly five millimetres of rain above normal.

Other parts of the province have been subject to far more rain this summer.

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“An example would be the airport station at Blue River is 153.4 millimetres of rain for July, so that’s a lot, and that’s actually 43 per cent above normal there,” Boyd says. “So the heavy rainfall throughout the north end of the Thompson has kept those (numbers) pretty high relative to what they are normally at this time of year.”

Boyd adds that a low snowpack and early melt contributed to fears this summer could have been one of the worst for droughts.

Thanks to plenty of precipitation, Boyd says the worst of the drought fears for the province is likely over.

“At this point now, the month has been so wet that even a dry August might increase the drought levels again back from (level) one to maybe two if it continued to be dry, but i don’t think we’re going to get into any dire condition where we get into a level four or anything like that for that region.”