Water Security Agency to conduct snow surveys

Saskatchewan’s Water Security Agency (WSA) is once again preparing to carry out snow surveys to help forecast the runoff potential and provide information on water supply and flood risks.

The agency’s Patrick Boyle said snow surveys are done every February as spring approaches.

“What that means is we go … to 100 sites across Saskatchewan and look at the snow and try to get an understanding of how that snow will melt and what that means when spring melt comes,” Boyle said. “One of the things we look at is measuring the snow water equivalent or how much water is in that snow.”

Boyle said the agency then will use that information to try to calculate what that looks like when it does melt and how it impacts the landscape.

Snow surveys are important because they allow the WSA to collect real-world data that helps the agency understand each area and what the snow pack there looks like, according to Boyle.

“It’s important for a number of different communities and producers in the industry to understand how that spring runoff will happen and if there is going to be an issue, if there’s too much water or not enough,” Boyle added. “It really starts to get that … next level of detail for us in our next March forecast.”

He said generally across Saskatchewan, the WSA is expecting a normal to below-normal situation for spring runoff this year.

“(The WSA’s) preliminary report that came out in February summarizes a lot of that,” Boyle added.

Snow surveys are usually done twice during the winter and February is the most important month to do them, he said.

“Most people don’t want to hear this, but we could get a significant amount of snow from hereon (until) temperatures start to turn,” Boyle said. “If we get a lot more snow (and) we want to understand that, we’ll go out and do some more in March as well.”