Wet Yukon weather not raising water levels, say officials

It's been wetter than normal in southwestern Yukon, but all this rain is not enough to bring the territory's water levels back up to average.

It's not record-breaking precipitation, but conditions are wetter from Whitehorse to Burwash Landing, says Bobby Sekhon, a meteorologist with Environment Canada.

He says on average, Whitehorse gets 32.4 millimetres of rain every June. So far this month, it's already received 26.5.

"More than half of the normal monthly precipitation has fallen and we're not even halfway through the month," said Sekhon.

And there's more rain forecast for the rest of the month, he says.

But Yukon is still dealing with the impacts of a historically low snowpack this winter. There was very little spring melt, and water levels are significantly low across most of the territory.

"Pretty much all the stations are either slightly below average, or slightly below historical minimums," said Yukon government hydrologist Benoit Turcotte.

He says a number of stations are actually setting new historical lows. The rain has provided a small boost, but not enough to be significant.

"There is almost no residual snow in the watershed. It means that if the rain stops, the flow will drop down kind of fast, unfortunately," said Turcotte

"We'll just hope for a nice summer with rain once in a while to limit forest fires. But again, there's nothing that we can do. Climate change is bringing us more extremes, and I believe that 2019 is a good example of a type of extreme."