Is your Okanagan home at risk of flooding? There’s now a website to help you figure it out

Whether you live on Okanagan Lake waterfront or a few of blocks away from Osoyoos Lake, a new website will let you find out your risk of getting wet if there is flooding

The Okanagan Flood Story website was inspired by a 2013 flood in Calgary but work on the site really took off after record floods in the Okanagan in 2017 and 2018.

While it’s largely a technical tool that allows local governments to determine what are safe elevations to build within, there’s also a tool for individual property owners to search their own addresses to determine their risk of flooding under different conditions.

“The purpose of this flood site is to make everyone, all the public and anyone who is interested, understand the risk of flooding for the lakeshore in the Okanagan all the way from Armstrong down to Osoyoos,” Anna Warwick Sears, executive director of the Okanagan Basin Water Board, said during a news conference today, May 6.

While the site won’t allow people to identify their risk of flooding due to specific weather events, they can look on the River Forecast Centre web site to gauge what impact the current weather situation could have on their properties.

The project was coordinated by the water board at a cost $2.5 million and go here to check out the website.

The B.C. River Forecast Centre website can be found here.

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