{"id":1841,"date":"2011-06-08T22:07:45","date_gmt":"2011-06-09T05:07:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=1841"},"modified":"2011-06-14T06:11:35","modified_gmt":"2011-06-14T13:11:35","slug":"flood-crest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=1841","title":{"rendered":"Flood crest"},"content":{"rendered":"

The late Jack Morris of Kaslo had a rule of thumb about high water on Kootenay Lake. He would watch a patch of snow on the mountainside and he claimed that the spring flood would crest just as that snow melted.<\/p>\n

I thought about Jack\u2019s rule and it made good sense. At this time\u00a0of year, the determining factors for the Lake\u2019s level is inflow and\u00a0the constriction at Grohman Narrows which limits the outflow.\u00a0As the snow line moves up the mountain in the spring, at some point there isn’t enough snow left above it in the high mountains to melt and provide a greater flow into the Lake\u00a0than out. At this point, the Lake level will start to drop.<\/p>\n

Alas, I don\u2019t know which spot Jack monitored, and even if I did, I wouldn\u2019t be able to see it from my home.\u00a0But, might I do even better by using the Redfish Snow Pillow<\/a>\u2014a guide to snow depth in the mountains that is\u00a0available on line for all to see?<\/p>\n

\"\"The first question is: As the snow on the pillow melts in the spring, at what (water equivalent) depth does the Lake level typically crest? After a few years of monitoring, it seems the value is about 700 mm (with some variation).<\/p>\n

The second question is then: Can we predict when this year\u2019s plot will descend to 700 mm?\u00a0Yes, look at this year\u2019s plot. It is the dark blue line. It looks as though it will track fairly close to the lighter blue line from a previous year. This crosses the 700 mm point on the final day of the month, or perhaps the first day of July.<\/p>\n

Now, I am not so na\u00efve as to believe that this approach captures all the variability possible: sudden warm spells, or extensive rain. Yet, it is probably not far off.<\/p>\n

For now (June 8th) my expectation is that the Lake will not crest before the dying days of the month.<\/p>\n

It is early June; the Lake is rising and hasn\u2019t finished doing so.
\n\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The late Jack Morris of Kaslo had a rule of thumb about high water on Kootenay Lake. He would watch a patch of snow on the mountainside and he claimed that the spring flood would crest just as that snow … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1841"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1887,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1841\/revisions\/1887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}