Water levels expected to be relatively normal this year

Craig Bakay | Mar 22, 2017

Area conservation authorities are for the most part still in wait-and-see mode regarding this year’s freshet (spring thaw and resulting snow/ice melt in rivers/lakes) but things seem to be shaping up for a fairly standard season.

“We’re a little bit away from the spring peak I think but we may have already had it,” said Gord Mountenay, water management supervisor at Mississippi Valley Conservation. “There’s still some snow left but eventual water levels will still be dependant on how much rain we get. We’re still looking at whether we’ll have to release some water or hold it back.

“We’ve had a fairly decent melt and it’s not looking like flooding (but) the biggest concern right now is stay off the ice.”

Pat Larsen, senior water resources technician at the Rideau Valley Conservation Authority, paints a similar picture.

“The amount of snow we’ve had is a good thing in most ways,” he said. “The melt (in February) reduced things nicely but then we got more snow.

“(But) the cold temperatures have helped keep river flows down so we’d need more than 50-60 millimetres of rain before we got into flooding situations.”

Still though, he said, a “minor drought” condition is still in place, based on last year’s model.

“We’ll look again in April to see what kind of recharge we have and if we’ve had the peak for this year then it’s one of the lower ones.”

He said the trend is a decline in area rivers and lakes.

“In Wolfe and Greater Bob’s Lakes, we’re above targets but they have fallen back,” he said. “And 5-10 millimetres of rain won’t do a lot.

“It’s still certainly a ‘who knows’ but if it’s like last year, water levels will be lower.”

Larsen also had a warning about spring ice.

“People need to be very careful on waterbodies in the spring,” he said.

In the areas serviced by the Cataraqui Region Conservation Authority, watershed engineering technologist Shawn Fairbank said that while 2016 experienced “severe drought conditions,” the region seems to be out of that now, but it’s been “an interesting spring.

“It seems like we had the spring freshet in February but then we had snow in March. We had a second smaller melt in March but I think we’re out of that now.”

It’s a similar situation in the Quinte Conservation area.

“This winter has been surprisingly ‘typical’ in terms of precipitation of snow and rain,” said Christine McClure, water resources manager at Quinte Conservation. “However, the temperatures have been quite different.

“We’ve had more melt events this winter and they’ve been earlier than normal, especially in the south.

“There is still snow in the north and the final water levels will depend on how that melts.”

She said we didn’t have lots of intermediate melts though because temperatures still dipped below freezing overnight.

“Things melted slowly because it was warm and then cold, warm and then cold,” she said. “So, we didn’t have peak stream levels during those times.”

She said we did get a good replenishment of groundwater but “we should be cautious about groundwater because if we don’t get more rainfall in the spring, we could have lower levels in late summer.”

She said overall things are in a reasonable range even though levels have peaked earlier than normal.

“The challenge is we’re looking at levels as they’re occurring,” she said. “Everything else is about what the weather is like for the rest of the spring.”

For a map of Ontario’s conservation authorities and the areas they serve, visit conservationontario.ca/about-us/conservation-authorities/ca-contact-list.