Snowpack ‘extremely’ high, B.C.’s Thompson-Nicola district says prepare for flood

The Thompson-Nicola Regional District in B.C.’s southern Interior is telling residents to get ready for rising waters after cool weather delayed snowmelt for many weeks.

Kevin Skrepnek, the district’s emergency program co-ordinator, says the snowpack remains “extremely high” in certain areas and that has elevated the flood risk, especially on the North and South Thompson rivers.

He says smaller tributaries in the same area could also be affected by possible heavy rain events and the regions that were damaged by last year’s atmospheric river flooding or wildfires are especially vulnerable.

The district has deployed sand and sandbags at several locations in the area where flooding is expected.

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Evacuation alerts have been posted by the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen for 18 properties along a stretch of the Tulameen River as the weather-delayed spring freshet continues.

In northwestern B.C., emergency officials say as many as 20 buildings are flooded in three communities.

On Friday, the BC River Forecast Centre said it was concerned about the Bulkley River in the northwestern part of B.C., as well as the east Okanagan/Boundary region.

“We’re definitely seeing the cool weather play a role, in terms of the seasonal aspects of the streamflow. We’re very late, in terms of river runoff and the snow melt side of things,” Dave Campell with the centre said at the time.

He said there was no short-term risk of flooding in the Lower Mainland, though that could change in the coming weeks.