While March rain may not have been ideal for outdoor activities, it helped with the snowpack in the Prince George area.
On April 1st, the Upper Fraser West basin saw an increase bringing the snowpack in the area up to 94 per cent of normal, while the Upper Fraser East saw an improvement up to 79 per cent of normal.
“The weather patterns in March were really split between the North and the South,” said BC River Forecast Centre Hydrologist Jonathan Boyd.
“Prince George was right in the middle there, anywhere north of Prince George, they all dropped relative to March 1st.”
Down south, Boyd said there was an increase across the board due to the wet weather in the province.
“For example, Kelowna was the second wettest March on record, and that’s dating back to 1899,” Boyd said.
“I think Vernon was in the top five, Penticton was number three, even Williams Lake was the second wettest, not going back quite as far, but back to 1961. It just was, we’ll say a miserable March in the sense that there were a lot of storms, a lot of them unfortunately happened on weekends as well, but it was certainly a positive from the snowpack perspective.”
Boyd noted the provincial average was at 79 per cent of normal on April 1st, an improvement from 73 per cent.
Boyd added that’s significantly higher than the same time last year, when the provincial average for snowpack on April 1st, 2024 was at 63 per cent of normal.
“Last year really was kind of the benchmark low snowpack across the entire province dating back to about 1970,” he explained.
Looking ahead, Boyd said there is a bit of concern for drought.
“What we are not wanting is a sustained period of hotter than normal weather,” he said.
“So getting into five to ten days, or what we saw in 2023, which was May ended up being the hottest May on record pretty well all across the province, and that led to a really rapid melt of the snow pack, it dried up the ground, it led to by far the worst drought season that we’ve had in the province, and as many can remember, 2023 was a really challenging wildfire season as well. The most optimal situation is never great for our own weekend activities and recreation, it’s to have a cool spring and a generally wet spring.”
According to Boyd, the April 1st Snow and Water Supply Bulletin is usually the benchmark bulletin of the year as it historically represents the peak of the snow season.
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