A creek on Mount Currie has jumped its banks and is flooding water onto the highway into Pemberton, a roads supervisor told Pique Monday afternoon.
In the midst of forecasts calling for a massive deluge courtesy of a Pineapple Express, Pemberton residents returned home Monday night to find their cars navigating a layer of water that spread across the top of the highway.
Brad Gerhardt, a roads supervisor with Howe Sound Mainroad Contracting Ltd., said that water is running across the road after a creek overflowed and found a new path down the mountain.
"It's basically an overflow of the creeks is what it is," he said. "I don't think anything is being threatened by it, we're monitoring it as we speak."
Gerhardt said workers with the contracting company have put up cones and a truck to keep an eye on the road and ensure people can traverse safely into town.
"You've got to slow down of course," he said. "It's well-coned and there's a vehicle monitoring it."
The flooding comes just hours after officials with B.C.'s Ministry of Environment lifted a flood watch it issued for the Whistler and Pemberton areas the day before. The Squamish area remained on flood watch but alerts were lifted for the northern portion of the Sea to Sky corridor.
A flood watch update issued at 7:30 a.m. on Monday said a weather system had delivered "generally lighter rain" over the past 24 hours. It warned, however, that snowmelt is likely occurring along lower valley areas and that rivers are rising, but all, it said, were "well below levels of concern."
The large, wet warm front that's hitting the province was expected to bring 80 to 200 millimetres of rain to Metro Vancouver by the end of Monday.
A report from Environment Canada said additional rainfall of 20 to 50 millimetres is expected in the Howe Sound area by Tuesday morning and that "significant rainfall" is expected or occurring in the region. It warned that the system could bring heavy rains to the area overnight.
