The snowpack is starting to decline in the Prince George area and across the province, according to the BC River Forecast Centre.
“Typically, the April 1st is kind of the bulletin with which we measure, compare historical years,” said Hydrologist Jonathan Boyd.
“Once we hit May 1st it’s usually a bigger indicator of how the seasonal snow melt is progressing. At this point in time, seeing drops from the per cent of normal at the snow basin indices across the board, across the province from April 1st to May 1st.”
Boyd said a lower than normal snowpack plus warmer than normal periods of time last month contributed to the decline.
On May 1st, the Upper Fraser East was at 71 per cent of normal, while the Upper Fraser West read at zero per cent.
“There’s actually only three sites within the basin, two of them, Burns Lake and Bird Creek are at relatively low elevation,” Boyd explained.
“They both were just coming in at zero, and part of that is the snowpack was low at lower elevations, so they just melted early.”
Boyd added there’s another station towards the north that does still have snow, but it’s a relatively new automated station and does not have historical data.
Boyd said the concern is still high when it comes to drought, as we’re coming off a few years of drought.
“To have those pre-existing conditions of three years of drought leading up to this year where again the snowpack is very low, the melt happened early for April, we’ve been really fortunate for the first couple weeks of May,” he said.
“Generally May has been pretty seasonal and in some cases even a little bit below seasonal for temperature, so it’s at least slowed down the snowmelt in the areas that do have snow.”
Boyd said there’s some areas of the province, such as the North East, that ran out of snow early and haven’t seen much precipitation.
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