By Greg Fry

BC awash with flood concerns

May 11, 2018 | 11:22 AM

KAMLOOPS — Communities throughout much of B.C. continue to be threatened by rising flood waters.

Dave Campbell, head of the BC River Forecast Centre, provided what has now become a bi-weekly update via teleconference Friday.

“We’ve seen significant deterioration of conditions through the central and southeast parts of the province over the last few days,” he said. “In some ways, a worst case scenario leading into that with warm weather and heavy rainfall through many areas and superimposed on an extremely high snowpack.”

Campbell said the worst may not be over yet for deeply affected areas including Grand Forks — which has seen evacuations — and other areas in Boundary country.

With above average temperatures persisting, he said to expect continued pressure in Kelowna into the North Okanagan and up into Vernon. Other areas with high snowpacks are on watch too, including the Kootenays, the Upper Fraser Basin near Prince George and Houston.

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He said the hot weather forecasted is of particular concern over the coming week which is even affecting the Fraser River system down into the Lower Mainland.

“Temperature trends over the past three weeks have been in the order of five degrees above normal. A prolonged hot spell that has challenged the province.”

Closer to home, Campbell said we may be nearing the potential peak at Mamit Lake where he said it’s dropped 20 to 30 centimetres over the past few days.

“And I think that’s indicating we’re out of snow at the mid-elevations that feed that area. At this point that looks possible. Mamit Lake challenges may start to ease as we get to the mouth of Guichon Creek and the confluence the Nicola which is still quite high so if that’s a pinch point it may be different there and continue to rise.”

Chris Duffy, executive director with Emergency Management BC programs, said flood concerns have prompted them to open up regional emergency operation centres in four of six regions in the province.

“We have 23 states of local emergency today, 10 band council resolutions, 31 evacuation orders affecting 1,993 homes, 36 evacution alerts affecting 930 homes, 19 local authorities have emergency operation centres activated, nine First Nations have emergency operation centres activated and we have three reception centres open,” he added.

Duffy said the province has also deployed more than two million sandbags, 10 sandbag machines throughout the Interior and also has machines on loan from Saskatchewan.