The snowpack in our local mountains has just about the normal amount of snow. If you are puzzled, then, by all the shoveling being done down in the valley, you can be forgiven. There is a discrepancy in the distribution of snow - 20 to 40 per cent more than usual - at the bottom of the mountains.
"At the high levels the snowpack is right on normal," said Prince George-based river forecaster Lyle Larsen of the B.C. Ministry of Environment. "At the lower levels, the accumulation is at 120 per cent of normal in Prince George, 140 per cent of normal at Hansard, and 130 per cent of normal at Valemount, so yes that is a fair bit more than normal in the valleys."
Making it seem even worse was the lack of snow Prince George received last year. At this same time in 2010, the snow levels in the area were only about 80 per cent of normal. From 20 per cent below the normal line to 20 or 30 per cent above the normal line is a bit shocking to the shoveling muscles.
It isn't anything the local river systems can't handle, if all goes according to normal during the spring.
"We still have another month of accumulation at the higher levels, but we are at normal levels up there so it would take a lot of new snow up high to push that into levels of any real concern," Larsen said.
As for the snow down lower, it won't be rushing into the rivers when the alpine runoff takes place, it will melt off at the onset of spring. Some of it disappeared down the Nechako and Fraser currents this past weekend.
"If there is a really hot period and a big melt happens in a short time frame it can result in some water ponding in low-lying areas," said Larsen. "That could cause some inconvenience. Sometimes it can clog up storm drains, if it simply can't drain fast enough to handle the water load, but if it melts off at a normal pace, things will be fine."
The data Larsen goes by comes from several measurement sites at a number of sites around the region, at a variety of elevations. Some give realtime information via electronic equipment, and some have to be manually checked.
The next full round of calculations will be done on April 1 and Larsen said it was this data each year that gave the province's waterways forecasting team the best indication what the spring runoff would probably look like.
