Bow River - Runoff 2012

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On Friday Nov 01, the flow rate of the Bow River at Calgary is fluctuating in the range of 60 cms.

It's always interesting to look back on the river conditions over a fishing season.

For 2012, we began with the highest Canadian Rockies snow pack in history.  On March 23, John Scurfield of Sunshine Village reported  “This is an all-time record snowfall, more than I’ve seen in my entire life and I began skiing at Sunshine in 1970.”  Over 909cm (30ft) had fallen since opening day.

Fortunately, the spring run off was somewhat orderly, and we did not experience any severe flooding. On June 28, flood watches were lifted.

However, very high water continued for much of the early summer. The flow rate spent weeks in the 300 cms range, approaching the 500 cms level a couple of times.

It took until August 03 for flow rates to decrease below 200 cms.

On August 15, it finally got down to below 150 cms.

Overall, we had wonderful weather over the summer and early fall.  June, July and August  were the the hottest summer in three decades.  Average daily temps at the YYC airport were the highest since 1970.

Taking out the cool and rainy June, and looking just at July, August and September, Calgary experienced the warmest summer and early fall since record keeping began in 1881!!

And finally, October was rolling along fairly good, until we ran into snowfall beginning on Saturday October 20. That brought drifting on the Bow River to a screeching halt. 

Since then, except for two days when we reached highs of 2°C and 4°C , the temps have been below 0 °C.

So, that's a wrap on 2012.  Already looking forward to 2013!