The new course of the Coldwater River, which now runs down Pine Street north of Hicks Avenue. (Photo via City of Merritt)
Another atmospheric river is poised to slam into the BC coast and the southern Interior, leading Merritt to brace for potential impacts as memories flash back to the mass evacuations and flash flooding just over two years ago.
While it’s not expected to be as severe as the November 2021 event, which washed out much of the City of Merritt and wide swaths of the Coquihalla Highway, 30-60 millimetres of rain is expected to fall on the Coquihalla between Merritt and Hope from Monday night through Tuesday.
Mayor Mike Goetz says they were told by the province last week that they would be put under a “yellow alert” for the possible impacts of the storm.
“We are in the yellow; in other words, it could affect you but, right now, it says it will affect the Coq more than anything else,” said Goetz.
“The reason we are in yellow is for the higher snowpack on the Coquihalla more than anything, most of this will be taken out down on the coast and the mountains will take most of it, but we will get some.”
However, Goetz says his community has been preparing for the worst, out of an abundance of caution.
“I’m sure that this will not be anything like we had. The rivers are extremely low right now — you can almost walk across the Coldwater River without getting wet at this point — so we can take a fair amount of water.”
He says that if worst comes to worst, they are prepared to evacuate the community, at a moment’s notice.
“We have the full-time Emergency Operations Centre up at the airport all ready to go, all you have to do is turn the key and go in; our Emergency Support Services folks are completely trained and ready to go as well and the fire department is ready to do any evacuating if they have to.”
In the meantime, Goetz says they’re monitoring the snow and rain conditions in case anything changes.
“If we get a large dump of snow up at the Coquihalla, and it gets warmer, that water has to go somewhere; we’re being very careful on what the snow load and rain is going to be.”
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Meanwhile, Environment Canada has also issued a heavy snowfall warning for drivers headed into the Rockies along the TransCanada, where 15 to 25 centimeters of snow — possibly mixed with freezing rain — is expected to hit Monday night and into Tuesday as well.
