Early snowmelt in B.C. points to elevated drought hazards

CBC News

· Posted: May 23, 2025 2:09 AM EDT | Last Updated: 2 hours ago

The B.C. River Forecast Centre says conditions successful British Columbia points toward elevated drought hazards successful the province.

B.C.'s snowpack sits astatine 61 per cent of mean levels arsenic of May 15, the centre wrote successful its latest report, down from 71 per cent connected May 1. 

Those little levels are a reflection of the information that snow is melting earlier than normal, the study said, chiefly due to the fact that April was warmer than normal.

Thirty-six per cent of B.C.'s snowpack had melted by May 15, the study said. In a emblematic year, 21 per cent of the seasonal snowpack has melted by mid-May.

Darius Mahdavi, CBC's subject specialist, said early snowmelt tin pb to less snow to provender reservoirs aboriginal successful the season.

"The snowfall is benignant of similar a backup for the rain," Mahdavi said. "If we don't get rain, but we inactive person snowpack melting it benignant of tin compensate for that a bit. If we don't person the snowpack, there's nary backup."

The centre said determination is nary elevated flood hazard fixed existent snowpack levels, but higher flows are imaginable if determination is dense rainfall.

A provincial drought monitoring survey issued Thursday said cooler and wetter upwind implicit the past week has improved drought conditions and boosted streamflows, particularly successful the province's confederate coastal areas, but said rises successful streamflow owed to snowmelt tin disguise drought conditions.

"Streamflows whitethorn diminution rapidly erstwhile snowpack has afloat melted if important rainfall does not occur," the survey said.

Mahdavi says drought conditions successful the northeastern country of B.C. are the astir worrying, with the basins astatine Fort Nelson and North Peace astatine drought Level 3 and the East Peace basin astatine Level 4 connected a standard that ranges from zero to five. 

The survey paints a somewhat much optimistic representation for occidental B.C., Mahdavi says, with drought conditions improving in the Lower Mainland, Sunshine Coast, Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii.