May 13, 2004

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- With dry weather predicted for a third summer in a row, British Columbia may experience its worst drought since the Great Depression, water experts warned.

"We're in such a drought situation that even if we did get torrential downpours for the next few weeks, it wouldn't matter," provincial fire information officer Nancy Argyle said Wednesday, "and the forecast is for the opposite of that."

Amid a warm, dry spring and facing predictions of more of the same throughout the summer, Argyle said British Columbia could face even more forest fires than last year's record season.

So far there have been 206 fires in the province between April 1 and May 11, compared with 134 in the same period last year

None of the blazes got out of control and the current province-wide fire risk is low to minimal with no fire bans in place.

Nonetheless, provincial river forecaster David Gooding said almost every area of British Columbia is already facing low ground water levels.

He attributed the trend to a dry April, snowpacks that melted two to four weeks early, dry grounds from two years of previous low precipitation and winter precipitation that was 25 to 40 percent below normal.

"As the snow melted, it just disappeared and didn't make it into the streams," said Gooding.

"Last year the accumulated precipitation for lake levels were close to historic minimums set in the 1920s," he said. "The Okanagan Lake (level) goes back to the early 1900s."

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