The Red Deer River is a wonderful river for rafting on. It is called a “wild river” which is a river which is not dam controlled. In the quest for cheap energy these types of rivers are at risk of being lost.
The amount of water in the river varies with the depth of the snow pack as well as rainfall. When it warms up in the mountains the melt occurs and the rivers start to swell.
Here in the parkland of Alberta we have lost all our snow but we can see it west of Sundre on the mountains. Depending on when it warms up at those higher altitudes we will get our stream flow.
Usually the river is flowing by the long weekend in May or the weekend after. At this time we have enough water in the river to float our rafts and there can be some sizable rapids. From this time on the flow rate of the river builds up until about the third week in June. Then we are melting the snow in the wide mountain valleys and passes where there is a lot of expanse of land, and snow.
As the day temperatures continue to warm up, snow is disappearing in the lower regions and the snow melts at higher and higher elevations. Here the total land area decreases as we climb up toward the narrowing peaks such that the flow rate of the river is slowly dropping.
Along with this process of melt contributing toward the amount of water in the river add on the rainfall. Whether it be cold or warm temperatures, a good rain in May or June can be a heavy wet snowfall that accumulates in the colder mountains or if it is warm rain it speeds up the snow melting process. The river flow rate in June is very unpredictable and can vary in amount wildly.
With the factors of amount of snow, rate of melt, temperature, elevations and warm or cool precipitations, which can be rain or snow, we can only guess at when the season starts and when the most water will be in the river.
I hope that a lot of the factors are in favour of water in the river come this long weekend in May; maybe we can get out paddling... depending.
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