Ice jam in Qu’Appelle River might cause some flooding

The temperatures in Saskatchewan have been quite warm to start off the spring.

That’s great for people looking to enjoy some sunshine after a frosty, snowy winter, but it’s causing some issues in the province’s rivers.

Patrick Boyle, the spokesperson for the Water Security Agency, said the WSA has issued an advisory for the Qu’Appelle River near Craven and Lumsden.

The agency is warning of something called ice jamming.

“When you have a quicker melt and the ice breaks up, while you have water flowing at the same time, this creates the potential for effectively a dam on the river, on a river system. So you have it completely blocked,” he explained.

And what kind of problems does that create?

“It creates two problems for us. Once you have that dam, any water upstream has to back up. And then what can happen is that it dumps out onto the landscape. The second issue with that is when (the dam) breaks, you get a surge of flows coming downstream,” Boyle said.

However, he doesn’t expect anything major to come out of this situation.

“Flooding for (Lumsden and Craven), we’re not likely looking at an issue right now,” he said. “Having said that, if you get another rain event or something on top of this, that can compound the situation.

“But really, the likely scenario here is that there could be some spilling (and) some minor issues on some hayland or stuff like that in the valley.”

Crews are also actively working to deal with the ice jam.

“Our operational goal for that is to try to divert as much water as we can into Last Mountain Lake. And why we’re doing that is because … from the last couple years of dry conditions, (the water level in the lake) has gone down. It has been at below-normal levels,” Boyle said.

“So right now, we’re trying to capture that spring runoff water, divert as much as we can and bring Last Mountain Lake up higher while also dealing with that ice jam situation.

“It’s a bit of a balancing act.”