Since 2013, people living near streams and rivers in southern Alberta have been keeping a wary eye on the mountains, trying to gauge just how high the spring run-off will be.

Alberta Environment and Parks are the people who keep track of the mountain snow pack, and according to Bernard Trevor, the Manger of the River Forecast Team, snowfall levels are trending only slightly above average so far this year.

"Generally our snow pillows which are instruments that measure the amount of snow in the mountains, they actually weigh the snow, are all showing that the snowfall is fairly decent and it's actually in the upper quartile of snowfall that we've measured over the past few years.  Basically that means that 25 per cent of the measured snowfalls have been above that and 75 per cent have been below that, so we're at the upper side of average for snowfall in the mountains."

Trevor says we're above average for normal snowfall at this time of year and we still have a month or six weeks of snowfall to come in the year.

Many factors play into what the spring run-off from the mountains will be like.  Trevor says, "That's based on base flow as well as the fall precipitation. We're expecting an average to above average runoff from the mountains, but that's entirely dependent on the amount of snow we'll see by the middle of May as well as what the temperatures we're going to see to drive snow melt.  We're also dependent on the amount of rain that we'll see in the early summer as well because that's a big factor when we're looking at runoff."

2013 proved you don't have to have a large snow pack in order for it to flood.  "In 2013 actually we had an average snowfall.  There's not really a correlation between the amount of snow we have and the potential for flooding.  We've had a number of large floods in southern Alberta and they've all been with average snowfalls and then we've had drought years as well where there's been a lot of snow but it's been a drought year.  The flooding is really driven by that rain we see, or rain on snow events."

Trevor says Alberta Environment and Parks isn't seeing any reason for concern with flooding right now, but they'll keep watching the snow pack and other factors.  "Flooding is really driven by rainfall and weather in Alberta is very variable and we have to be concerned about that and we have to keep that in mind."

 

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