Floodwaters inundate Squamish Valley Road

The atmospheric rivers and record-breaking warm weather blanketing B.C.'s South Coast are causing flooding in Sea to Sky country, including parts of Squamish.

On Tuesday, parts of Squamish Valley Road were closed and underwater.

“That's shut everything down up there now too,” said Paul Lewis, who’s lived in the area 65 years.

He frequently sees the water rise and recede, but said it’s becoming more and more common in recent years.

“It's up and down. You don't know what's going to happen when you get the torrential rains nowadays. We've seen it,” he said.

Paul Lewis says he's seen more frequent fluctuations in river levels in recent years.

Flood warnings are in place for the Lillooet, Squamish and Cheakamus rivers, where swift-moving water is running high and carrying large pieces of debris downstream.

"This is a particularly warm system,” said Natasha Cowie, a hydrologist with the B.C. River Forecast Centre.

“The things that are making it unique for this time of year [is] that consistency of the wet conditions and consistency of those warm conditions."

The high flows are being driven by heavy rainfall, and rapid snow melt, as the freezing level has risen above the peaks of the local mountains.

"We're looking at very, very saturated soils and that certainly does increase the risk of landslides, of slumping, of culverts washing out,” said Cowie.

“There's a lot more vulnerabilities around that."

John Clague, a professor emeritus of earth sciences at Simon Fraser University, said this kind of weather pattern is more common in early fall – not late January, and warns it could lead directly to water shortages later this year.

"With all of this snow being melted and the caveat that we're only halfway through the winter, I think our snow packs are going to be very low when summer arrives,” Clague said.

Elevated river levels are not expected to start receding until later in the week, with the arrival of cooler and drier conditions.