Although city officials don’t expect an unusual amount of rain or melting snow over the weekend, sandbags have been stockpiled just in case.
Leah Kongsrude, manager of community sustainability with the City of St. Albert, said as of Friday morning the Sturgeon River is at a plateau with no signs of increasing or decreasing rapidly.
“It’s a little bit higher than it was on Tuesday but we’re not expecting it to be increasing with any significance over the next few days. We’re still saying this is the week it will have its highest point.”
Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development issued an advisory on Thursday warning Albertans living north of Edmonton that they may experience “localized ponding in low-lying areas where water does not have a direct route to stream channels. Over the next several days water levels will rise in the smaller creeks with a possibility of flooding in adjacent low-lying areas.”
Kongsrude said the city has placed sandbags around doors closest to the river as a precautionary measure to protect properties, but they do not expect any drastic changes in water levels.
“If it does rain this weekend then we may see (the river) rise a little more, but again it would depend on where it rained. Sometimes we get two inches of rain in Campbell and nothing in Riel. It really depends,” she added.
Environment Canada has not forecasted any extreme weather for the next week.
Properties in the older areas of the Mission neighbourhood – on the north side of the river between the Perron Street bridge and St. Albert Trail – are most vulnerable to flooding due to their close construction to the flood plain.
Kongsrude said the last time sandbags had to be used to combat rising water levels was in 2011.
