CBC News - River levels and rain forecasts at 'unprecedented' lows in most of B.C.
“On the streamflow side of things, somewhere in the order of [a little less than] one-third of the stations across the province are at record-low flow. We haven’t seen this kind of condition before in most of the province.”
“There have already been significant impacts to agricultural producers in the province. So our unirrigated dry land farming, which we see more so in the central northern part of the province, primarily on hay production is really being impacted the greatest. Right now we’re seeing areas where hay production is in the range of about 50 per cent of what it typically would be.”
Low water levels at Lynn Creek in North Vancouver, B.C., on July 11. (Justine Boulin/CBC)
Drought conditions continue to intensify across British Columbia, with 8 of 34 water basins currently classified as Level 5 on the drought index (adverse impacts almost certain), and another 13 water basins classified as Level 4 (adverse impacts likely). This new article on CBC News provides key insights on the impacts of these drought conditions, with commentary from the provincial River Forecast Centre and Ministry of Agriculture. The frequency and severity of drought conditions in this region seem to be increasing; what does the future have in store for BC’s water cycle? This is what the Canada1Water project aims to answer!
C1W will provide a state-of-the-art modelling and data framework (with high-resolution climate projection data) to help provinces, cities, and small communities across Canada to understand how vulnerable our water supplies are under changing climate, and forecast long-term hydrologic trends. All associated data will be published as open-source datasets, lowering the barrier to entry for further high-resolution integrated hydrologic modelling and providing decision support information to help guide agriculture, forestry, industry, and rural community water resource planning to the end of this century.
Click here to read the article on CBC News
A screenshot of the British Columbia Drought Information Portal (https://governmentofbc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=838d533d8062411c820eef50b08f7ebc) shows widespread drought conditions all across BC, especially on Vancouver Island and northeastern BC water basins which are experiencing Level 5 conditions on the drought scale (adverse impacts almost certain).