Including, this time, the Alberni Valley.
Since it is Island wide, I will let you go check it out for details on other parts of the Island.
Here is the information most relevant to Alberni area residents:
Quote starts:
Weather forecasts indicate the front pushing onto north and central Vancouver Island today, bring moderate to heavy rain beginning this afternoon or this evening. The front is forecast to shift southward overnight, bringing periods of moderate to heavy rain onto areas south of Barkley Sound beginning after midnight and lasting to Wednesday evening.
Following the cool and wet weather of the past 2 weeks, very deep snowpacks have accumulated across the Vancouver Island Insular Mountains (and across the Coast Mountains of the south coast as well). The snow line on Vancouver Island this morning is low, near 500 metres. The prolonged period of warning will result in melt of low and mid slope snow overnight and on Wednesday, adding that water to rivers.
An additional factor with the high streamflow and flood risk from this event is that Vancouver Island has received very large amounts of precipitation over the past 7‐14 days; lake levels are very high, soils are saturated, and runoff rates are expected to be high.
Rivers will begin to rise overnight tonight, with widespread high streamflow conditions by Wednesday late morning across west Vancouver Island (Gold River, Heber River, Salmon River, etc.), and central Vancouver Island (Salmon River, Alberni valley, Tsolum River, Oyster River, Browns River, Nile River, etc.).A Flood Watch means that river levels are rising and will approach or may exceed bankfull. Flooding of areas adjacent to affected rivers may occur.
BC Environment River Forecast Centre
According to todays 18Z (10AM) run of the GFS weather model, the heaviest rains are slated to come between around 6AM and 10AM.
The high tide tomorrow is at 6:48AM … so hopefully the worst rains come after the tide starts to recede to their low at 1PM. If the rains come a little heavier, a little earlier, than we could be looking at more serious flooding, but it’s only slated to be about 60mm, so hopefully it won’t be bad… it’s the snowpack and saturation of the land/lakes that is causing the most concern I think.
Stay safe. I guess now I’ll find out how well I cleaned out my drains last week after our inch of water in the basement…
About The Author
Comments
9 responses to “Flood Watch Issued for Vancouver Island”
Just came back home after working in Nanaimo for a few hours. The Grove isn’t flooding over the road, but it has potential to if we get another wallop of rain. The river at the bottom of the Hump however is raging pretty good. I would say another foot, perhaps 18 inches and its touching the road.
Ya I noticed the Cameron River was looking mighty brown and unhappy. Hopefully the rain has stopped in time and there isn’t too much more melt off the mountains.
There should be a Flood update from the MoE within the next few minutes.
Has anyone heard anything about this possible flood warning that is supposed to be happening on December 2-3 because of the exceptionally high tide we’re getting on those two days? I would love any information…
I think starting next week we will see a lot less rain than in the past month, in which case the high tides should not be a problem. If you can though, it’s fun to go down to Clutesi Marina to see how high it gets!
Ya I would echo what Bill said, unless we get some rain, the high tide itself shouldn’t cause major flooding.
Next week is looking pretty dry… and the week after… down right Christmas-y.
I’m taking it to mean that “down right Christmas-Y” means the “S” word?
now now Eve. This is a family site. 😀
Hey Chris, what do you think may or may not happen this evening?
We were supposed to get a high of 6 today and a low of 3 tonight. Considering we haven’t gotten up to 3, I’m thinking it may get cold tonight, and when that chance of rain swings along, it’ll either be white stuff, or warm up and just be rain.
Your thoughts?
I was just thining the same thing……….