Water experts on edge as another dry summer heats up in southern Alberta

David Bell · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 15, 2025 4:29 PM EDT | Last Updated: 10 minutes ago

Prominent hydrologists are sounding the alarm arsenic different adust summertime successful confederate Alberta — with the anticipation of h2o restrictions — is coming into focus.

Water levels are low. Really low.

"The snowpacks successful the upland headwaters of the Bow River, the Oldman River, Red Deer River and North Saskatchewan River are mostly highly low, immoderate of the lowest I've ever seen," John Pomeroy told CBC News successful a Tuesday interview.

Pomeroy is the manager of the Global Water Futures programme astatine the University of Saskatchewan.

He said snowpack has a much captious relation successful h2o levels and stream travel than astir radical understand.

• Who gets h2o successful Alberta arsenic request grows? Debate heats up arsenic authorities consults
• Alberta dubs water-sharing agreements 'major success' arsenic experts accidental challenges inactive loom

"Our astir caller diagnosis utilizing hydrological models suggests that the snowpack is astir 80 per cent of the watercourse travel measurement that Calgary sees," helium said. "So it's highly important. Most of those rains recharge ungraded moisture. It's a snowmelt that generates watercourse flow."

That's the lawsuit but successful freak upwind incidents similar the 2013 Calgary-area floods, helium added.

One of Pomeroy's University of Calgary's colleagues said there's a batch going connected this year.

"This snowpack has been debased truly each winter," Tricia Stadnyk told CBC News successful an interview.

"And though we've made up a small spot of ground, that beauteous overmuch puts america connected par with immoderate of the snowpacks that we had successful 2024, past year. And conscionable arsenic a reminder, past twelvemonth was fundamentally a record-breaking debased for the magnitude of snowfall that we had accumulated."

Stadnyk is simply a Canada Research Chair successful hydrological modelling and prof successful the Schulich School of Engineering.

She said that successful mid-central Alberta the "snow pillows" — devices for measuring the h2o contented successful snowpacks — are thirsty.

"They're moving astatine astir a 75- to each the mode up to 200-millimetre deficit successful snowfall h2o equivalent. So that's a just spot of moisture that we're lacking," Stadnyk explained.

"And radical besides request to retrieve that we've had a precise aboriginal lukewarm period. We besides had a midwinter lukewarm backmost successful January that galore Calgarians enjoyed. But the effect of that is that we mislaid a batch of our snowpack precise aboriginal on."

Calgarians had a astonishment dump of snowfall a fewer days agone but that didn't alteration much, Pomeroy noted.

"And adjacent the astir caller play snowfall, which was precise welcomed — it was astir 30-mm h2o equivalent — but we inactive person implicit 100 mm to drawback up connected successful galore of these headwater basins. So it wasn't capable to bash it," helium said.

Above mean temperatures forecast successful coming months could further complicate things, Pomeroy added.

"So that aboriginal melt and a debased snowpack, the culmination is truly problematic for us. And if we get that, past we're going to person immoderate tremendous h2o absorption challenges passim confederate Alberta."

Pomeroy said it's important to link upwind changes overtime to their technological causes.

"We look to beryllium seeing much of this. And of people the temperatures are up and that's planetary heating and that's caused by greenhouse state emissions. So we're reaping what we're sowing."

For Stadnyk, meanwhile, it's clip to deliberation ahead.

"So I deliberation the main connection is, each the information that we're looking astatine is showing america that we're really successful a much precarious presumption than we were this clip past year," she said.

"So h2o conservation needs to beryllium apical of mind."