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If you picture Okanagan Lake as a bathtub, the current flooding situation will have water sitting right at the brim for the coming weeks.
It’s a situation that will keep residents living along the lake in flooding danger well into late June early July, according to the City of Kelowna's public information officer Tom Wilson.
“In a normal year at this time, 1-2 cm of water a day flows into Okanagan Lake. The maximum amount that can be discharged from the lake at the south end is 1.5 cm a day,” said Wilson.
“This year, in-flow to the lake from rain and runoff has been as high as 10 cm a day during the peak two weekends ago, to 4 cm on May 14.”
If Okanagan Lake is the bathtub, the drain for the tub is Okanagan Falls dam.
(Click here if you would like to learn more about the Okanagan Basin Water System.)
It’s a drain that can only discharge a maximum of 1.5 cm of lake water a day, and with anywhere from 4-10 cm a day being poured into the lake by the city’s creeks, the math doesn’t add up to receding flooding dangers anytime soon.
At last report on Sunday, Okanagan Lake was at 342.6 metres, which is only 40 centimetres below the flood mark.
If the lake exceeds that 343 metre mark, the downtown and Mission areas of Kelowna could face more flooding.
“The snow melt is only now starting in earnest, combined with the potential for more rain and a slow draining lake means residents along the lake need to keep flood protection in place for the foreseeable future,” explained Wilson.
“Likely toward the end of June or into July.”
This week's forecast calls for temperatures in the low to mid 20s, which means the upper-level snowpack will quickly begin to melt.
"The melting snowpack has caused the lake to rise by about 4-5 cms a day this past week even without a lot of rain,” said Wilson.
"It will be a good month before we’re going to be directing people to what they can do with their sandbags, until then they should really keep them in place.”
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