Lower Mainland may 'dodge the bullet' for potential king tide flooding

The king tides will return to the Lower Mainland from Dec. 5-9, but Metro Vancouver might escape serious flooding, if the forecast is correct.

After a record breaking wet November, the sun is expected to shine for the rest of the week which could limit damaging flooding.

Stephen Sheppard, a professor in forestry in the University of British Columbia's Department of Forest Resources Management, has spent a lot of time looking into how sea level rise will affect Delta and other low-lying communities.

"From the weather forecast, I think we're probably going to dodge the bullet a little bit, but you never quite know," Sheppard said.

Sheppard says that the height of the tides is dependent on multiple factors.

King tides can reach as high as five metres above average sea level and Sheppard says that low pressure systems that bring storm surges and waves can make the situation worse, causing flooding.

The City of Vancouver is asking citizen-scientists to document what they see as the tides rise over the five days and sandbags have been placed in susceptible areas. 

Sheppard says this will act as a visual record of what high tides caused by climate change may look like in the future.

"The projections are for this part of the world [for a sea level rise] of at least roughly a metre, in the Delta area more like 1.2 meters by 2100 ... and there are some concerns it will go up faster than that."

With files from The Early Edition