Heavy Rainfall Warning and Flood Watch Issued

Wind and Rain warning has now ended, I’ll blog again tonight… there are still flood warnings out and there is more wind and rain forecast for tomorrow, we reached 82kph at Alberniweather and 99.7kph down at the Harbour Quay weather station run by UVic. Hope everyone come out of it OK.

I’ll let Environment Canada and the Ministry of Environment do the talking:

8:35 PM PST Monday 16 November 2009

Rainfall warning for Inland Vancouver Island continued

Wind warning for Inland Vancouver Island continued

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Additional rainfall amounts of 20 to 50 mm expected by Tuesday morning.

This is a warning that significant rainfall is expected or occurring in these regions. Monitor weather conditions..Listen for updated statements.

Southerly winds 50 to 70 km/h will develop later this evening.

This is a warning that potentially damaging winds are expected or occurring in these regions. Monitor weather conditions..Listen for updated statements.

A slow moving pacific frontal system over the South Coast of British Columbia will continue to bring rain at times heavy over the area tonight. Additional rainfall amounts of 20 to 50 mm can be expected by Tuesday morning with highest amounts over Howe Sound and near the northshore mountains.

Meanwhile, strong southerly winds up to 70 km/h will develop later this evening. The winds are expected to ease Tuesday morning as the front moves inland.

Flood Warning Update: Vancouver Island 17Nov2009 7:30AM

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Flood Warning Update: Vancouver Island 17Nov2009 7:30AM
Flood Watch ENDED for South Coast, except for Vancouver Island River noted below
All Flood Warnings ENDED except:
• Tsolum River (Courtney)
• Nanaimo River
• Cowichan River

Rainfall ended on central Vancouver Island yesterday afternoon, and ended on south Vancouver Island and the lower mainland after midnight. Environment Canada has ENDED all Rainfall Warnings for the South Coast. Temperatures have fallen dramatically at snow pillow sites, and the freezing elevation appears to have dropped to near 1000 metres, largely ending the snowmelt that had been occurring during the storm event. Water levels on gauged rivers on Vancouver Island and lower mainland are dropping, except for the Cowichan River which is still rising slowly. The Tsolum River and Nanaimo River remain above flood warning level as of 7AM.
The status of rivers is as follows (current to 7PM):
• Gold River – has dropped below warning level
• Heber River – has dropped below warning level
• Salmon River at Sayward – has dropped below warning level
• Tsolum River (Courtenay) – has dropped 1.7 metres from its peak and continues to fall,but remains above flood warning level
• Browns River (Courtenay) – has dropped below warning level
• Englishman River (parksville) – has dropped below warning level
• Nanaimo River – has dropped 0.5 metres from its peak and continues to fall, but remains above flood warning level
• Chemainus River – has dropped below warning level
• Cowichan River – Continuing to rise slowly following overnight rain (which ended at 2AM). Near a 5‐year return period.

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38 thoughts on “Heavy Rainfall Warning and Flood Watch Issued

  1. The Flood watch continues for our area.

    There are also high tides of 11.5 ft today, tomorrow, and Tuesday between at 10:44, 11:22 and 11:59 respectively so watch for flooding around those times as well as sewers may start to back up if there is heavy rain and increased stream flow.

  2. I see the high rain rate was 6.6 mm/hr this morning. That’s a bit of a relief. So far it’s been steady, but not terribly heavy.

  3. Yeah it is… I’m only 7mm away from topping 100mm (or 4 inches). I’ve even had a few good wind gusts in my sheltered little corner of town… I can’t wait til I get my sensor up another 30 feet!

  4. My guess is a leg dropped somewhere, and it took that long for it to re-route back online. I don’t believe there is any generators at the substation.

  5. I was just going to say that Eve! I was up for a couple hours during the night, and I tried to check the wind speed, but Chris was off-line. The power didn’t go off here, but there are two trees leaning precariously toward the house this morning. Looks like some more logging of the back yard is in order.

  6. Ya sorry about that last night… luck of the logger I guess. I don’t know what went down last night… but it was very localized to just a few blocks.

    I’m going to stop by Staples tonight and buy another UPS. As with most things it seems,it’s cheaper to get a new better UPS than it is to get a battery for the old one.

  7. Well it looks like it will be generator for a while yet….power has been out since midnite..and by the looks of Lakeshore rd…the Hydro guys will be busy. Lines snapped and not touched yet. And wow did the lake ever come up in a hurry!

  8. Our power was out from basically 9pm till 6:30am this morning…that totally screwed up my weather program’s log files….oh well…have recorded the weather this morning at work I see we have a 978mb low heading for Cape Scott…that ought to be interesting.

  9. Ya I saw that dip in the isobars on the satellite picture this morning and thought it looked like a low developing “from afar”… that certainly looks like a doozy.. the QuickScat has some 50knot flags on the SE side of it and plenty of 40s around the entire south perimeter

  10. Sooo…does that mean another sleepless night Chris? It’s so calm now, but I take it the winds are on the southern edge of this system and will affect us most as the tail end passes over us?

  11. Winds are always strongest on the southeast side of the low from what I remember. So we won’t be seeing anything for a few more hours I think.

    In the latest Satellite Barometer analysis you can see the isobar lines… winds always go parallel to those… right now they’re lined up roughly to Northern Oregon… so they should pull up our way as the low pulls North.

    I dont’ know, it’s mighty calm out there. Almost eerie.

  12. Thanks Chris, it’s been a few years since I have looked at fax charts on a regular basis and I’ve lost my bookmarks. The thing about the latest pressure chart is that the lines don’t look all that close together to me. Maybe just wishful thinking – I don’t want those two leaning trees to fall on the house tonight!

  13. Ya I wouldn’t wish that on anyone!

    They don’t look too tight to me either… but then… that pressure she sure is droppin’. If it gets down to 98 you might want to sleep somewhere else tonight.

  14. Okeedokeee. Wind and rain out Beaver Creek…Loud and dark.Gusts…alone, careful what I wished for……..Be safe all

  15. was just outside for a moment and it was CHILLY.. last nite at least it was a somewhat warm breeze.. is it gonna warm up or stay the same..

  16. Wow.. it was cool when I got back home, and no wind, and now the wind is back, and the temp is jumping again. I love freaky weather!

  17. Good ol body clock woke me up at around@4am to go to work……no power.

    Back up battery for my sump pump dead.Powered up the generator .Man o man is it blowing hear way out the creek.
    Thank gosh I woke up!

    good luck all

    Mark

  18. Wierd

    Calm steady wind for a while and then furiuos bursts of wind,and not to much rain!….?

    I took the day off to baby sit my house so I hope That it gets worse……….:)

    Mark

  19. i just looked at the statistics for Nov 1 – 17, 2008 vs. this month. So far we have had nearly twice as much rain this November as last. (298 mm vs 155mm)

  20. Yep. It’s certainly flirting with the 2006 season. I’m willing to bet that if we had data from Courtenay it would look very much like our data from 2006. This year we got the wind, they got more of the rain and flooding.

    Back then for the same period:
    Totals and Averages
    rain: 428.75mm
    hi rain rate: 50.55mm/hr
    high wind: 103km/h

  21. I hope I didn’t catch too many people out… I noticed this morning that US imperial units were acting very badly on the website and uncovered a couple other bugs as well. It’s all fixed for now. I’ve turned off US imperial support completely. Hope it didn’t wreck anyones viewing too much.

    Cheers. Chris

  22. Environment Canada’s precipitation figures are:

    Nov 1st – 16th 2006: 433.2mm

    Nov 1st – 16th 2009: 439.4mm

  23. Is that from the airport station Bill?

    I am sure that my station might be under-reporting a little compared to 2006 as the rain bucket is a little more exposed to the wind than it was back then. But it should only be out by 20-30mm I would think… the heaviest rain would have still hit the tipper had it been there. We just didn’t get the downpours in town that we did that year.

  24. Actually I cheated. It’s from the airport station, but I got the information from the much-maligned Weather Network. They get their information from EC, and they have a very easy to use tool for looking up historical statistics – you can search by day rather than just monthly. Since you asked, I double-checked for 2006 on Environment Canada’s Daily Observation site, and it matches TWN exactly. EC is sometimes a few days behind on the information though, so Nov 14, 15, and 16 aren’t posted for 2009 yet.

  25. Well…I know it does not count for out here…but my deck is white with the stuff from above….big nasty flakes…quite cool as well.

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