Chris Moss

When we had our rain water harvest tank of 3000 gallons installed we dug a small area to receive the excess water once the tank was full.  The first year it happily flooded the small field downhill.  The next spring we had a swale dug to hold up to 6000 gallons of runoff from the roof.  Since that time the rainwater fills the swale each winter and slowly allows the water to seep into the surrounding land, forests and aquifer underneath. This water supply lasts until the rainfall reduces in the Spring. 

This year on January 20^th, I noticed that the pond is now half empty, waiting for new rains to fall.  If they do, great.  If not, we might be heading for another dry summer earlier than we thought.  Fortunately we had good rainfall late last year which filled up the Sooke Lake reservoir to 94.9 %.  This is just about at the minimum amount required by the CRD water system to supply all the water they need to meet local demand for the year. 

There are many ways to keep track of Sooke’s water and drought levels. You can watch the water levels at Sooke Lake online simply by typing ”Sooke Lake water level”  in your browser (or clicking here)    The site offers a weekly update and yearly summaries which clearly show the annual charge and discharge of water volumes from the dam.  2025 looks like it will fall within the normal parameters for water storage. 

The next site you might want to look at is the BC Drought Information Portal. This site will give you the current conditions in areas of BC and a useful chart to compare regions and much more; Angling Closure Information Bulletins, Temporary Protection Orders, BC Energy Regulator Directives, and Local Water Restrictions, BC stream flow maps, Precipitation Conditions Map, Groundwater Conditions Map, 30-day Low Streamflow Forecast, Snow Basin Indices Map,  and a really interesting national Map at the Canadian Drought Monitor site.

The Canadian Drought Monitor shares monthly drought conditions across Canada ( for example you can learn that as of Jan 2025 there is an extreme drought in Northern Canada) as well as historical data and drought forecasts. It contains links to the US Drought Monitor, the North American Drought and the Mexican Drought monitors.

The Groundwater maps on the BC Drought Information Portal are based on Provincial observation wells.  Sooke has two of these at the top of Phillips Road into Aquifer 599, which is the Sooke River shallow aquifer,  and into Aquifer 606, the deep aquifer.  The map shows that in January 2025 we are below normal in the level of groundwater that we should have for this time of year.  The Precipitation maps for our area show a disturbing trend this year. Most Vancouver Island rainfall is substantially less than the medium level for this time of year.

From DEC 25 to JAN 23 (2025) Victoria had 70 mm less rain than normal. Port Alberni had 159 mm less than normal. Sooke will fall somewhere between those two values. Lack of rainfall, lower than normal groundwater levels and even my small swale half empty in the middle of January all indicate a dry winter and a dry spring.  These are continuing reasons to remember to conserve water year round and to never take it for granted that the recharge of water, whether in the ground, our wells, our reservoir will occur over the winter months.