Although the weather is nice today, it’s too early to think the challenges of flooding are gone.
Minden Hills Mayor Brent Devolin tells MyHaliburtonNow.com that as much as things are looking up, the forecasted rain could be problematic. According to Devolin, the forecast given during the daily EOC conference call suggests that the area could get up to 55 millimetres of rain by Thursday night.
“I’m not being alarmist but I would say if you’ve been around the village of Minden and the river, and for those of you that like looking at the chairs, we’ve had three days of the water levels going down,” says Devolin who goes on to say “my expectation is not that we are going to go back to the peak but we may get some of that back for a number of reasons.”
The reasons, according to Devolin, “first of all, 55 millimetres of rain is a sufficient amount. It will probably make the levels rise a bit,” he continues “on an operational side, in the lakes above us, knowing what’s coming, they are starting operations today to pass more water through for let’s say the next 24 hours.” Devolin explained that is so that lakes above Minden have more capacity to take in water during the forecasted rain.
The mayor emphasized again that he is not trying to be an alarmist, but the weather today is not an indication that the 2019 incident is over with. He urged residents with sandbags set up to keep them there for the time being.
Devolin believes that depending on the severity of tomorrow’s rain, the town might be into next week before the metaphorical dust settles from the rain event, let alone when the state of emergency will be done.