Rain, glorious rain.
It might not have been a welcome sight for voters visiting the polls Monday morning to see the sky crying like it was, but lawns and gardens in the city and farms in the surrounding area that grow feed crops will no doubt benefit from that stretch of at times heavy rainfall.
April has been a slightly drier than normal month for Prince George with only 19.2 millimetres of the normal 30 mm of precipitation falling on the city’s Massey Drive weather station, not including the measurable moisture we got today.
But looking at the big picture, the region appears to have recovered after two years of what were some of the driest conditions ever observed.
“Conditions generally are much better, both longterm and seasonal-wise, we’re really into the high-flow season right now so over the last couple weeks we’ve really seen that snowmelt come down and stream flows are pretty high,” said Dave Campbell, head of the BC River Forecast Centre in Victoria. “We’re coming into the rainy season and we’re starting to see some more weather events come through, different from that dry pattern we’ve been in.
“Looking at precipitation in Prince George on a longer-term type of scale, we’ve see a lot of improvement over what has been a drier couple of years and looking to October of this year we’re really tracking right along normal (compared to) two years ago when we were tracking at near historic low levels."
In February 2024 the River Forecast Centre said snowpack levels in BC were on average lower than they had been in 45 years and that led into a drier-than-normal summer over most of the province.
The village of McBride issued a state of emergency in September 2023 to impose strict water-use restrictions that remained in effect until May 17, 2024.
Campbell said the province ramped down drought levels in the Omineca region, which includes Prince George, when September and early October brought significant rainfall to the north central Interior. It’s now down Level 0 drought — in sharp contrast to 2023 when it was at Level 5 through much of that year.
Snowpacks are a little above what they were last year for the areas that feed water into the Fraser and Nechako river basins. In the April 1 survey, Upper Fraser East in the Robson Valley is at 79 per cent of normal, compared to 56 per cent at the same time in 2024.
“We’re watching that right now and the concern is if it stays hit and dry obviously that’s going to start putting some more pressure in terms of conditions later in the year,” said Campbell.
“The Nechako basin has been one of the drier areas and some of the more persistent lower snowpacks as well as just drier weather, so there’s little bit more concern of the conditions in that region as we come into spring,” Cambell said.
West of Prince George, the snowpack that melts into the Nechako was at 67 per cent of normal in the April 1 survey, while Upper Fraser West (areas not controlled by the Kenney Dam on the Nechako south of Vanderhoof) was at 94 per cent.
Although drought levels have diminished in the Okanagan, where snowpacks were at 82 per cent of normal April 1, the Peace region of northeastern BC remains a concern to climate scientists because precipitation amounts have not recovered as they have in Prince George and low stream flows are being reported.
Campbell said with some long-range climate models signaling a warmer-than-normal spring and summer throughout much of BC, that could lead to quicker snowmelt and increased evaporation and the wildfire hazard could depend significantly on how much rain falls in May and June.
In Prince George, the sun is expected to return Tuesday under a mix of clouds with a high of 12 C but then it gets much warmer this week with sunny skies predicted for Wednesday and a high 17 C, warming to 22 C Thursday and Friday.
We’ve nudged the 20 C mark twice already in April. We got to 19.7 C on the 25th and 20 C on the 26th. The coldest day this month was April 3, when it dropped to -3.8 C.
It’s still too early to leave tender plants outdoors overnight with the temperature hitting the freezing mark overnight tonight and -1 C on Tuesday.
More rain showers could be on the way for late in the day Friday, continuing Saturday with a predicted high of 14 C.
