Rain, Rain, GO AWAY!

Kelowna is in a serious flood situation! At one point 400 homes were evacuated and at this point many of those people are still out of their homes. While the creeks have started to return to lower levels …

Picture taken two weeks ago

Picture taken May 15th, the creek dropped almost two feet overnight!

All that water has to go somewhere and now Okanagan Lake is only 30cm from the flood mark and rising an average of 5cm a day!

Picture taken May 2nd

Picture taken May 7th

Picture taken May 15th and I had to stand in water to take the picture. I can no longer get a picture of the shore without wading out into the water.

Since May 15^th I have been using the concrete step down to the beach as a marker for how fast the water is rising in the lake.

Picture taken May 12th, water is just starting to come over the concrete.

Picture taken May 15th and I had to stand in water to take the picture. I can no longer get a picture of the shore without wading out into the water.

Picture taken May 18th, water is completely covering the metal lid.

I mentioned in a previous blog that Okanagan Lake’s surface area is 351 square km. I saw this on the news this morning and thought it really put into perspective how much the lake is rising every day. A 1cm rise in lake water equals 3,510,000 cubic metres of water, which is equal to 1404 Olympic swimming pools! The lake has risen at least 2cm since yesterday, that’s 7,020,000 cubic metres of extra water … and we are not done yet 😦 We are still getting snow at the higher elevations and it has been raining off and on over the past few days in the valley. Next week the forecast is for sunny warm temps in the high 20’sC (low 80’sF) and while that is awesome for people like me who have really missed the warmth, it’s not so good for the lake and rivers. The higher temperatures will cause the snow pack to melt faster than normal and will add more water to the already high water levels, so Kelowna and surrounding areas are into heavy flood preparations around the lake. Fingers crossed that all that work is just a precaution and isn’t really needed … time will tell.

Friday marks the beginning of the first long weekend of the summer, Victoria Day, and the campground full sign went up first thing this morning. Hubby has been helping out all week with repairs to the bridge that were caused when two large trees came down a few weeks ago. The bridge needed to open today so that campers could get into the third loop of campsites.

Photo taken May 6th

The work was completed this morning, just in time to open the third loop which is fully booked from today through Monday 🙂

There was also a push to redesign the site that washed into the creek a few weeks ago. This is a popular site and is fully booked for the summer.

You can see the old picnic table in the creek. It was washed away when the end of the site fell into the creek.

Newly redesigned site, it turned out pretty good!

Tomorrow is a district wide Pro-day for the teachers so our daughter is bringing out the kids to camp with us for a few nights. I think I’m hoping for good weather but then again I don’t want the snow pack to melt to fast … hmm I’m not sure what I’m hoping for 🙂 

Until next time …