It’s time for another look at how Okanagan Lake has risen over the past week.

Because of the long weekend, we have nine sets of data over eight days to peek at today.

Since our last weekly tracker story on Monday, May 15, Okanagan Lake has increased from 342.048 metres to 342.267 metres, a difference of 21.9 centimetres.

The lake now sits 21.3 centimetres below the full-pool mark of 342.48 metres, which means we could be very close to that number when we check in again at the start of next week.
 

Mission Creek has steadily been flowing into Okanagan Lake at around 50 cubic metres per second over the past week, although it was flowing fast this morning at 66.9 cubic metres per second.

That’s largely in part to the heavy rain that hit the region on Monday, and that number should decline a fair bit as the snowpack continues to dwindle.

The BC River Forecast Centre released its latest snowpack numbers (as of May 15) late last week and it shows that a significant amount of high-elevation snow melted during the early-May heat wave.

In the Okanagan, the snowpack went from 144% of normal to 81% of normal between May 1 and May 15.

As a result, the increases in Okanagan Lake’s level, which have averaged around 2.5 centimetres per day as of late, should start to decrease in the coming days and weeks unless there is more significant rainfall.

At this point, it’s a fairly safe bet that the lake will hit full pool, but without significant and prolonged precipitation, it is unlikely that it will get high enough to produce any notable flooding.

Here’s a rundown of Okanagan Lake’s level and Mission Creek’s outflow rate at 5 am over the past seven days, and if you want to see these numbers each morning just subscribe to our daily newsletter: