Okanagan city learns what a difference a little bit of rain can make

WEST KELOWNA – A cool dampish July created a unique turnaround for the West Kelowna water storage system.

In a July 9 report, West Kelowna staff warned city council of a potential summer drought following a warm dry spring. Because of some rain in late June, staff held off imposing stricter watering restrictions that would have reduced lawn-watering to two days a week from every second day.

A new report going to council Tuesday, talks about something that has never happened in West Kelowna’s 11-year history as a city – the partial refilling of reservoirs once they started to drain in July.

Normally, reservoir levels start declining in July and don’t begin to recover until the fall.

“Never before have we seen the graph actually climb back up once this initial decline has begun,” the report states.

In fact, July was slightly above average when it came to rainfall at 42.4 mm this year versus normal rainfall of 37.2 mm. Because the past two Julys were very dry – including no rainfall at all in 2017 – it appeared to be an unusually wet July this year.

Even as an average month, that meant residents cut down on the amount of watering they were doing which allowed the West Kelowna reservoirs to recover somewhat, although not to full capacity.

Now there’s no need to cut watering to two days a week.

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