Sheep River's snowpack and flow rate looking better than anticipated so far

The Town of Okotoks has been monitoring the Sheep River since May and so far, so good.

The town’s Water Manager, Davey Roberston, says the snowpack is holding up.

“What we’ve seen are snowpack levels were below average in the early winter, but we’ve seen a significant increase between early March and early May, so Mother Nature has definitely stepped up to help us out here.”

River flow levels have also been stable.

“At the Okotoks flow monitoring station, we’re currently at 14 cubic metres per second, and that’s within that normal range for this time of year for the Sheep River.”

It’s certainly not what had been anticipated earlier in the year, with precipitation having made up for what was expected to be a much dryer spring.

“Early winter we were certainly in preparation mode for the drought conditions at the time. What we’ve seen is a pretty significant increase in precipitation levels and snowpack between that March and May period, so that really helped us out in terms of recharging the aquifer and building up those snowpack levels so we can ride off those levels into early summer.”

He says those levels may fall more in line with what they were expecting in the summer months.

“What we do expect as we progress into the summer, I think weather forecasts are looking at a hotter, dryer period as we approach July-August. At that point, we’ll be monitoring closely, and we expect those river levels to decrease, and we’ll respond accordingly.”

By this time last year, the Town had already called for Okotokians to reduce water usage due to low river levels.