Lake Level Shoots Up

[KenL]

Interesting chart that was published on Castanet regarding the sudden water influx into the lake...but is it accurate? The story indicates that the lake level rose 2.67 meters as a result of Thursday's storm. Really? That's over 8 feet!! Is that possible?

[gman313]

hahahahahahahaha

check your math you are not making yourself look intelligent

[gman313]

The lake levels were down to 1.32 metres above baseline as of March 16, but overnight that level jumped up to 1.35 metres above the mark.

[TreeGuy]

https://www.castanet.net/edition/news-story-221881-1-.htm#221881

[KenL]

Too early for April Fools??

[featfan]

I was amazed at the Mission creek graph.
I can`t figure out how to cut and paste it.

[WalterWhite]

These numbers don’t make sense. Mission Creek is the largest single contributory to Okanagan Lake, and crossing over this morning it looked no different than it has in previous days. Runoff takes time to move from where deposited into streams and then to the lake. Even though we experienced heavy rain yesterday/last night, the bulk of it appeared to fall west of the valley.

ETA: if you look at the precip measurements from a Penticton to Vernon, the average between them doesn’t seem to add up to overall rise in lake level of 30mm.

Summerland saw 32.8 millimetres of rain fall — well above a previous record for Mar. 22 of 14.4 mm in 1995. In Penticton, 29.6 mm of rain fell (previous high of 16.3 mm, 1972), while Osoyoos had 18.3 mm of rain (10.2 mm, 1988).

Kelowna received 12.7 mm of rain in a 24-hour span, while Vernon saw 6.5 mm.

[Glacier]

Shoot up? That's like what heroin addicts do. SCARY STUFF!!!! I'm so scared. Thank you, Castanet for the scaring the crap out of me!

Oh, and before the rest of you soil your underpants, let's put the year to date water level in perspective...

[Glacier]

These numbers don’t make sense. Mission Creek is the largest single contributory to Okanagan Lake, and crossing over this morning it looked no different than it has in previous days. Runoff takes time to move from where deposited into streams and then to the lake. Even though we experienced heavy rain yesterday/last night, the bulk of it appeared to fall west of the valley.

ETA: if you look at the precip measurements from a Penticton to Vernon, the average between them doesn’t seem to add up to overall rise in lake level of 30mm.

Summerland saw 32.8 millimetres of rain fall — well above a previous record for Mar. 22 of 14.4 mm in 1995. In Penticton, 29.6 mm of rain fell (previous high of 16.3 mm, 1972), while Osoyoos had 18.3 mm of rain (10.2 mm, 1988).

Kelowna received 12.7 mm of rain in a 24-hour span, while Vernon saw 6.5 mm.

Why not? The lake gets 20mm directly, and the creeks feed in a lot more than that because 1) the rain was much higher at higher elevations, and 2) the rain melted a lot of snow. The creeks did come up including mission creek. The 30mm rise is nothing. Just a blip on the radar. If it's dry for a while, you won't even remember this blip happened.

BTW, Mission Creek only accounts for 4% of the water flowing into Okanagan Lake.

[Glacier]

Here are the current stream flows for the all the biggest rivers in BC:

Peace = 1720 m^2/s
Columbia = 1670
Fraser = 975
Stikine = 338
Thompson = 195
Mission Creek = 1.4

[WalterWhite]

^^That's partly what I mean - Mission Cr. increased only 0.3 m3/s - hardly a huge jump in volume. I realize Mission Cr. accounts for a minimal amount overall, however it's the single largest, and it only increased by 0.3m3/s. No argument on precip levels being more at higher levels - however that also takes more than just a few hours to make it's way down from higher elevations into the lake. I also agree, this 30mm supposed raise in lake level is and will be just that - a blip on the radar. Really just another example of the continuing click-bait captioning by Castanet.

[GordonH]

Interesting chart that was published on Castanet regarding the sudden water influx into the lake...but is it accurate? The story indicates that the lake level rose 2.67 meters as a result of Thursday's storm. Really? That's over 8 feet!! Is that possible?

Only in your wildest nightmare or a dam at north end of the lake roughly the height of maybe the Hoover broke open (maybe lower). lol

[Glacier]

Interesting chart that was published on Castanet regarding the sudden water influx into the lake...but is it accurate? The story indicates that the lake level rose 2.67 meters as a result of Thursday's storm. Really? That's over 8 feet!! Is that possible?

Wut? The Castanet article says it rose 0.03 m! NOT 2.67 m!!!

That means it rose 30mm, which is what you'd expect just from the rain with a slight amount of extra water coming in from the rivers.

As for the comment about Mission creek being the largest source, that's a bit deceptive. It's only 4% of the water flowing out of the lake (even less than 4% flowing in because some water evaporates). By contrast, the Thompson river accounts for 50% of the water in the Fraser River. Oh, and the Shuswap River accounts for 50% of the water flowing into Shuswap Lake. The Tulameen River makes up close to 50% of the Similkameen River.

Mission Creek is a drop in the bucket of the entire lake. Lots of other creeks are almost the same size.

Anyway, the lake rose mostly from the rain overtop of the lake.

[alanjh595]

0.03 meters = 1.18 inches. That's about this much,
[__________]

i don't have a ruler handy and your results may be different based upon your screen size and magnification level.

[andrea-lake]

The provincial government tracks a lot more inflow sources than Mission Creek and they are obviously concerned enough to alter the drainage rate from 0.5 cm to 1.5 cm per day.