No flood fears as Calgary prepares for mountain snow melt

The city will release more water from the Glenmore Reservoir soon to make room for spring run off from the Rocky Mountains.

Although the mountain snowpack is slightly higher than normal, officials aren’t concerned about flooding downstream in Calgary.

Rick Valdarchi, the water resources program manager with the city, says flooding is possible if there's an unusually high amount of rain that falls on that snowpack in a short period of time. Last June, 300 millimetres of rain fell over a few days onto snow, causing serious flooding in southern Alberta.

Calgarians will notice the Glenmore Reservoir levels drop in the coming weeks and there may be slightly higher water levels on the Elbow River, he said.

“Another reason that we're drawing the level down now is we can do it in a very slow, controlled manner so we don't incur any riverbank stabilization by increasing that flow that could cause some riverbank stability issues,” he said.

The city is holding two more sessions to answer any questions Calgarians have about flood preparations and flood recovery.