Metro Vancouver reservoir levels slowly climbing up thanks to accumulating snow

The North Shore mountains as seen from Vancouver on Feb. 8, 2024, with little snow seen on ski runs and other areas. (CityNews Image)

Posted March 5, 2024 7:31 am.

Last Updated March 5, 2024 9:02 am.

The snow has been piling up on the North Shore mountains over the past week with up to 130 centimetres of fresh powder. It’s not only good news for skiers and snowboarders, but it’s welcome news for Metro Vancouver’s local reservoirs.

About a month ago, snowpack levels were at about 30 per cent of normal for this time of year, but thanks to the snow, it now sits at about 50 per cent.

Heidi Walsh, director of watersheds and environment with Metro Vancouver, tells CityNews it’s been a rocky start to the season and the agency wants and needs more snow.

“It’s not great, but it’s not terrible. It’s about the seventh lowest on record, and that dates back about 75 years.”

B.C. drought levels. (Courtesy B.C. Government)

Walsh says the regional district has to wait to see what spring brings to understand what the coming summer will look like, which could include extended district water restrictions, potentially brought in sooner than usual.

“If we get unseasonably warm temperatures and warm rain that we had through November, it can make our snowpack disappear really, really quickly, in which case we’re going to be back in the same place that we were a month ago,” she explained.

“If we can get through June with having some snowmelt, we’re usually in pretty good shape, but it’s always a good idea for us to be conserving water, because we really don’t know how late in the season the drought is going to go. We’ve seen a couple of years now where it’s been dry — we usually get rain in September, and it’s been dry right through to the end of October.”

She says planning for possible dry conditions now is critical.

“We’ve started our normal summer refill operations a little bit earlier. We actually started those at Capilano this week. And we’ll do the same at Seymour at the beginning of April — we’ll capture a little bit more water over there early in the season.”

Water restrictions begin on May 1, but Walsh warns that date could be moved up if things dry up. She says water conservation is no longer a summer habit, but a year-round one.

“Only doing full loads of laundry and full loads in the dishwasher. Really, the biggest thing is if we can change people’s minds about how they view their green lawns in the summertime and if people can get it in their head that it’s OK for your lawn to go golden … it will come back in the fall. That’s really our biggest water use during our peak demand time.”

Walsh adds people in the Lower Mainland are among those who use the most water in Canada.

“We’ve got a long way to go. We live in this rainforest. We’re so used to it raining, pretty much from September right through until March, April, even into May and people think it’s this endless supply of water.