Water levels at Maxwell Lake — and in Salt Spring’s other freshwater basins — are finally creeping up, according to monitors, but the process certainly seems to be taking its time.
“So our lakes are recovering very slowly,” said North Salt Spring Waterworks District (NSSWD) operations manager Vaughn Figueira. “Yes, we’ve had some snow, but it’s not nearly as much precipitation as we would have expected normally.”
Figueira presented data to NSSWD trustees Thursday, Dec. 15. Since August, he said, rain levels have been well below normal. Last year, he noted, heavy rains in the fall quickly filled lakes after a long, dry summer.
“In November [2021], we really started to come on with some heavy rains, and that helped us recover,” said Figueira. “Unfortunately, that’s not happening at the moment.”
The crawling pace at which lakes are refilling is the product of several months of stubbornly low precipitation, well below not just 1981-2010 “climate normal” averages, but also less than Environment Canada’s more recent recordings. There have been far drier summers, where Salt Spring experienced lower lake levels than 2022, but few wet seasons have been this slow to effect a refill.
Figueira said longer-term predictions are difficult to make — Environment Canada offered a “60 per cent chance we’ll get rains above normal,” he laughed — but barring large weather events, it will be well into January, or even February, before lakes reach normal capacity.
“If we got an atmospheric river? We need probably a couple to get us back in shape here,” said Figueira.