While all eyes are on B.C. communities that were impacted by November’s atmospheric river storms, the City of Kamloops is also preparing for the potential for a severe freshet this year.

“We’ve definitely been monitoring things throughout the winter and into the early part of the spring here, the real cool spring that we’ve been having particularly in April with a bit of snowfall even,” Utility Services Manager, Greg Wightman, told NL News.

“It has definitely raised the snow basin indexes for the North and the South Thompson. Both river basins are sitting quite high, well above seasonal averages, and we’re just keeping our eye on the weather here and hoping for a gradual warming trend and no severe weather over the next little while here.”

The North Thompson snowpack is at about 119 per cent of the seasonal average, the highest its been since 1999.

The South Thompson is at 101 per cent of the seasonal average, but Wightman says it could actually be closer to that 119 per cent level as a few stations are not reporting any data.

“We’re kind of in this transition period between watching the snow basin indexes and starting to look at weather and the BC River Forecast Centre data,” Wightman added.

“Right now, we’ve got very high snowpacks but all that really means at this point is that there is possibility of a severe freshet. If we have favourable weather throughout April, May, into June, then we should be okay.”

“It has actually been a little too cool for our liking here,” he added, referencing the temperatures in the Kamloops area over the past few days. “We like to see temperatures in that mid-teens to early-20’s this time of year so we can start melting off some of the snow of what we can get into the real high temperatures, you know the 30s and 35s that we see throughout the late part of May.”

It is not just the Thompson rivers though, the City is also keeping an eye on smaller waterways in the area.

“The first thing that we are going to see here will be some of the smaller streams that are going to start to rise. Heffley Creek, Noble Creek, Campbell Creek…things that have risen in the past,” Wightman added.

“That is kind of our focus right now, those smaller streams that are so quickly impacted by weather that if we were to get a severe rainstorm or a really quick transition to warm temperatures, we may see some of the smaller streams around town rise quite quickly.”

Should that happen, Wightman says the city is prepared, noting they’re able to Emergency Operations Centre, similar to how it was done during the summer wildfire season.

And he also noted that the city will join provincial calls as early as next week, where staff will get information from Environment Canada and the BC River Forecast Centre about what is to come this year.