Forecasters hope for peak to Yukon flooding

Hydrologists with the Yukon government say floodwaters in the territory's Southern Lakes area may have reached their peak, while affected residents and emergency officials at Marsh Lake continue to keep an eye on already record-high waters.

Glenn Ford, a government geotechnical engineer who is monitoring water gauges at Marsh Lake, told CBC News on Tuesday that the level came up another 16 millimetres, bringing it to 657.20 metres above sea level. But barring any heavy rainfall, Ford said he hopes that levels will nowstay constantor start to decrease.

"The original forecast had it peaking tomorrow [Wednesday] so we're hopefully right on the money here," he said. "I think the rainfall is over now and hopefully this is the top."

However, forecasters still say it will take weeks before water levels on the lakes, located south of Whitehorse, recede to relatively normal levels. The current level at Marsh Lake, which has seen the worst flooding, broke the historic level of 656.994 metres set in 1981.

On Tuesday, emergency measures officials at Marsh Lake temporarily called off volunteer sandbagging efforts as water levels stabilized. An estimated 150,000 sandbags sit around the homes in the Marsh Lake area, forming dikes to protect homes from the high lake.

Residents are counting on the dikes to protect their homes from more flooding, and on numerous pumps including large so-called "super-pumps" to drain floodwaters around their homes, as they did on Army Beach Road over the weekend.

"They've made an awful difference," Army Beach Road resident Norm Wright said, as several inches of water lapped against his rubber boots in his front yard. Last week, Wright's yard and Army Beach Road were submerged in just over one metre of water.

"My golly, I couldn't come through here with these boots on. It was over top of these boots in this yard. And then [the] big pumps, they could pump this lake dry if they went and left them."

Those pumps have been moved to the South McClintock area, where most of the riverfront homes still have more than one metre of water surrounding them. Officials hope to have that whole area drained by the end of Tuesday.

"When the super-pump actually will start going here, we'll remove 350,000 gallons an hour," Marsh Lake emergency measures spokesman Darren Butt said.

"We figure within this area, South McClintock, we should have this drained within 10 hours. So again, you're looking at 3.5 million gallons of water currently in this area."