Image Credit: CFJC Today

By Adam Donnelly

FLOODWATCH 2020

Late flood season continues to impact Kamloops

Jul 3, 2020 | 5:06 PM

KAMLOOPS — It’s been a year of uncertainty surrounding rivers throughout the region. Early in the spring, officials from the City and province predicted a flood season that could rival some of the worst in recorded history.

After a cool spring, it was a mostly uneventful freshet. However, precipitation was higher than normal in June, leading to swollen rivers and headaches for those working to prevent flooding in the community.

Trying to keep track of the flood threat this spring and early summer has been difficult for City of Kamloops Utility Services Manager Greg Wightman.

“It’s been an incredibly challenging freshet season this year,” Wightman says. “Certainly the snowpack this year, being at 140 per cent of seasonal average, was a real concern of ours early on. Predictions of a one-in-20 year [flood event] were certainly out there.”

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Unpredictable is a word one could use to describe how the 2020 rise of river levels could be described. Uncertain is another. It’s one of the strangest freshets Wightman can remember.

“Where the rivers are right now is certainly approaching some of the highest we’ve seen this late in the year, dating back to as early as 1972,” Wightman says. “That’s purely based on rain, that’s all it is. The past month has been so wet, that where we normally start to see the snowmelt has tapered off and the rivers drop, it’s just remained really high with all the rain coming down.”

“It seems like we’re stuck in this pattern for the past four, six, eight weeks of ongoing wet weather,” Dave Campbell from the BC River Forecast Centre says. “That’s really driving the late-season high flows.”

Campbell says while the high water throughout both the North and South Thompson River basins this late in the year is not unprecedented, it’s certainly unusual.

“You tend to see the peak on the South Thompson later. There’s higher terrain, so it’s less unusual there, although I wouldn’t say it’s a common occurrence,” Campbell explains. “On the North Thompson, it’s getting — maybe not unprecedented — it’s certainly extremely rare to see flows this high, this late in the year.”

Wightman says the levels could potentially peak this weekend. However, the City plans to keep their flood prevention measures in place for the foreseeable future.

“We’re going to be very cautious about removing any infrastructure we have out right now,” Wightman says. “We may see Hesco baskets in Riverside Park and McArthur Island for several weeks, almost as late as the end of July.”