Editor's note: Updated with latest weather information.
Warm temperatures led to another high streamflow advisory for small and medium-sized rivers in the B.C. Southern Interior region last week.
The BC River Forecast Centre issued the advisory on May 10 for rivers in the West and East Kootenay, Columbia, Boundary, Okanagan, Similkameen and South Thompson tributaries, the Kettle and Granby rivers included.
On Friday, Grand Forks Fire Rescue chief Dale Heriot said there wasn’t immediate threat of flood, even though the river level had risen and said that he would be watching river levels over the weekend.
There wasn’t any new news on Monday but with the mercury hitting 29 C, Heriot estimated that the highest water levels would occur Wednesday (May 16) or Thursday.
“I’m not sure how much the rivers are going to come up. All my graphs aren’t showing me anything that would cause concern yet but I am watching them.”
Heriot said that the rivers still had a lot of room but hesitated to guarantee that there would be no flood concerns.
“I can’t really guarantee that it will be safe but I’m not so sure we’ll even get to the high water we had three week’s ago,” said Heriot. “It’s one of those things, you can never tell. You go by the graphs and you’re not in the hills to see how much snow’s up there but (as of Monday) we’ve got a lot of room in the river.”
Heriot also said that the cooler night temperatures were helping as well.
“I got up (Monday) morning and it was 8 C at my place and of course, once the sun comes up, it warms up pretty quick but being 8 C would put it close to freezing up on the mountains, so that means all night long, the melt will slow right down and what that does is it gives a little bit of relief on the river,” Grand Forks’ fire chief said.
“It gives you that relief instead of all coming at once.”
According to www.weathernetwork.ca, as of Tuesday morning, temperatures were expected to be 21 C Wednesday and only 18 C Thursday.