Late season dump of snow expected on Coquihalla Highway

Some of the snow that was missing during the winter is showing up a bit late with a storm expected to hit the Coquihalla Highway overnight.

From Hope to Merritt along Highway 5, Environment Canada is calling around 25 centimetres of snow to fall by tomorrow morning, April 14.

“That’s pretty heavy for this time of year, I would say. Have we gotten snow events this late? Definitely. But I think we could sometimes get snow in the mountain passes as late as May,” Environment Canada meteorologist Derek Lee told iNFOnews.ca.

The Okanagan Connector and the Coquihalla from Merritt to Kamloops are likely only going to get a few centimetres since most of the snow will fall at the summit of the mountain pass.

The region could use the snow since the Okanagan’s snowpack is seriously low, just 58 per cent of normal.

The valley bottoms as expecting some precipitation as well in Vernon, Kelowna and Penticton with a slight chance of some flurries.

“Temperatures could be close enough to see maybe some wet flakes in some areas in the valley bottoms. But I would say it’s hard for it to stick when it’s still above zero,” Lee said.

Lee said the freezing level is going to be around 800 metres heading into tomorrow.

“Anything higher there, you’ll probably see more snow as you climb higher in the elevations of the highway. And some parts probably still have some rain showers,” he said.

The Okanagan is anticipating some cloudy, rainy days with daily high temperatures around 12 Celsius until Friday, April 17. Kamloops should be a bit sunnier by Thursday with daily high temperatures looking like a sunny 19 C for the weekend.