Welcome to the second of our 2026 reports on Shuswap lake levels and watershed snowpack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Throughout April and early May, the Shuswap Lake water level has continued to rise and is now at 346.844, almost the same as was recorded at this time last spring. The Provincial River Forecast Centre\u2019s forecasts indicate that, with continued warm weather over the next ten days, the lake level will continue to rise by as much as 0.527 m (1.73 ft.). The increases in water levels are very similar to what happened last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Provincial River Forecast Centre has released May its 1st<\/sup> Snow Survey and Water Supply Bulletin. Generally, across the province the mountain snowpack is below normal at 83% of normal. However, this number hides the fact that in the northern half of the province the snowpack levels are well above normal while in the southern half of the province the current snowpack is below normal for this time of year In the South Thompson watershed (the current snowpack estimate is 69% of normal).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why? The weather through April has been generally warmer and drier, across the southern half of the province and, as a result, there has been lower than normal snow accumulations and an early start to the melt of the mountain snowpack. The SWE (snow water equivalent) data for stations in the Shuswap Watershed all show that the mountain snowpack as started to melt almost two weeks earlier than \u201cnormal\u201d and is declining quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, what can be expected through the remainder of May and June? So much depends on the expected weather pattern over that period. However, if the current weather pattern holds, and we continue to experience the warmer, drier weather we have been observed in the past month, we can expect the lake to continue to rise as it has in the past month, to a peak level, similar to that observed in 2025, but perhaps earlier than normal. The River Forecast Centre indicates that there is not much concern for flooding this spring but are concerned about drought conditions later in the summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n SWOA will continue to monitor conditions through June and keep you informed of any changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" May 2026 Welcome to the second of our 2026 reports on Shuswap lake levels and watershed snowpack. Throughout April and early May, the Shuswap Lake water level has continued to rise and is now at 346.844, almost the same as was recorded at this time last spring. The Provincial River Forecast Centre\u2019s forecasts indicate that,Continue reading →<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[114,66,65,55,11,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive-2026","category-mitchel_clyde","category-contributor","category-export","category-high-water","category-waterfront","has-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/swoa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/swoa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/swoa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swoa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swoa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8544"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/swoa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8545,"href":"https:\/\/swoa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8544\/revisions\/8545"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swoa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/swoa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swoa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swoa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}