The snowpack is still below normal for the Prince George area, but it’s better than it was last year.
On March 1st, the snowpack for the Upper Fraser East basin was 75 per cent of normal.
“The positive on it being below normal is that it lessens the risk for potential flooding,” said BC River Forecast Centre Hydrologist Jonathan Boyd.
“Of course the flipside of that is it might increase the potential hazard for wildfire and drought.”
The Upper Fraser West was at 87 per cent of normal.
“It’s actually one of the healthier snowpacks, relative to normal across the province,” he said.
Boyd doesn’t believe we’ll be as dire as last year, when the snowpack in the Upper Fraser East was at 52 per cent of normal.
“75 is just way better this year, and it’s already pushing back up,”
“It looks like at least the next 7-10 days still more on the stormy pattern, it’s really a positive, it’s what we’d expect from this year with it being a La Nina year.”
Overall, Boyd said the concern for drought is still pretty high.
“Somewhere in the province, there will be a challenging drought season just because the provincial average is at 73 per cent of normal,” he said.
“It’s been interesting this year, where relative to last year, provincially speaking, we’re better, we’re at 73 per cent, but last year was 66 per cent, and it was just dramatically low, so there was a lot of focus on the risks of drought and seeing this year that it’s a little bit higher than last year, maybe not so much at this moment in time.”
Boyd added the biggest factor for drought would be spring temperatures.
“Kind of the worst case scenario would be if we had the hottest April and May on record and we melted the snow really rapidly,” he said.
“That’s not usually what you would expect in a La Nina year, we’d normally expect kind of a cooler April and potentially that extra bit of snow accumulation through the end of April and into May.”
He added on average the provincial snow pack can be increased by about ten per cent from March 1st to May 1st.
“Ideally hoping that the provincial average can get up to maybe 83 per cent of normal by May 1st,” he said.
“Puts us in a better situation, but really drought is driven the most by what the spring weather conditions are and whether the melt is delayed, and also if we get that wet spring pattern that keeps the ground sustained and saturated.”
Boyd added that typically 80 per cent of the snowpack season has occurred by March 1st.
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