Drought presents higher risk for Kamloops this year, barring weather-driven spring floods

Weather is the flood factor

Photo: KTW file photo

The City of Kamloops says barring impacts from weather, drought, not flooding is the bigger concern this year in Kamloops.

Springtime flood concerns now depend more on the weather than the snowpack, Kamloops city council has been told.

Greg Wightman, City of Kamloops utility and environmental services divisional manager, said as of May 1, the North and South Thompson River basin snowpack basins were sitting at 84 and 72 per cent of normal.

At that time last year, Wightman said the North Thompson was at 71 per cent and the South Thompson was at 80 per cent — numbers that came during what was already predicted to be a bad year for drought.

“Really concerning numbers,” Wightman said. “What this means is less likelihood of flooding — you can't entirely eliminate that — because snowpack is just one factor. Weather is the biggest driver of freshet.”

He said 2025 has seen an early freshet, with much of the snow melt that occurs later in the spring having already occurred. Rivers are already running high.

“But what this does indicate is a high likelihood of concerns of drought,” Wightman said.

He said city staff are receiving specialized information from Environment Canada, and crews are performing weekly dike inspections.

Changes coming?

Wightman said the province is considering changing how drought level classifications are determined. The province's system acts as a trigger for the city to implement measures in its own drought response plan, including various levels of water restrictions.

Two summers ago, the city implemented strict watering restrictions in response to Kamloops hitting the province's maximum drought level five.

Wightman told council the province is looking to move to an impact-based system versus the current conditions-based one.

“They're not just going to look at water levels and weather, they're going to look what the actual impact of those are, and that may change some of the drought classifications,” Wightman said.

He added the change won’t affect the zero to five ranking system, just how they’re determined. The changes aren't anticipated to have any impact on the City of Kamloops' drought response plan.

“I think the additional statistics that they're considering will help ensure that when we do have drastic drought predictions, it's because there's an impact that we need to respond,” Wightman said.

Under the proposed system, drought levels would be set using a stats-based approach — the exact parameters of which have not yet been determined — with information from select data sets such as Water Survey of Canada hydrometric stations, Environment and Climate Change Canada weather stations and Provincial Groundwater Observation Well Network.