You may be aware that our Whitehorse hydro facility uses water from the Southern Lakes system to produce renewable electricity. As a community service to residents on Tagish and Marsh Lake, we hold annual information meetings to update the public on what we expect peak summer water levels will be. The information is useful to residents because it assists them in preparing their properties for possible flooding in high water years.
This year's meetings took place earlier this week and we want to thank those people who took the time to attend.
When predicting summer water levels, we take into account three things: the amount of snow that fell the previous winter, the expected summer temperatures (since the hotter it is the more glacial melt we can expect) and the expected amount of summer rain fall.
We know that there was more snowpack than normal this past winter in Southern Yukon. Environment Canada's long-range forecast is calling for normal temperatures and normal to above normal rainfall in the Southern Lakes area. Taking all this into account, we anticipate there will be peak water levels in the range of what was seen in 2004.
There was some flooding in 2004. However since then a number of residents have done some flood prevention work around their properties, which should help them this summer.
Here you will find a chart that shows a blue band. We expect the peak lake levels will be somewhere within this band. The red line shows the 2007 levels, the pink line indicates 2004 levels, and the green line shows 2008 levels.
Starting in early June, Yukon Energy will update this chart weekly on this blog and on our
website.
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