The BC River Forecast Centre’s groundwater level forecast, issued October 8, lists two provincial monitoring wells at 244th Street and 35th Avenue in Langley as below normal, and gives each a greater than 90 percent likelihood of staying below normal at all four points it forecasts: October 22, November 7, December 7, and January 6. In the Centre’s terms, normal is the middle half of the record for the time of year, between the 25th and 75th percentiles, and below normal is below the 25th. Its guide to the charts says the forecasts “do not guarantee future conditions.”
The two wells share one borehole and watch two aquifers. OW414 is finished at 125 feet (38 metres) in Hopington C, aquifer 1144; OW415 at 190 feet (58 metres) in West of Aldergrove, aquifer 33. Both were drilled in October 2011 and are in GWELLS as wells 105642 and 105644. The Province maps both aquifers as confined sand and gravel of glacial origin, and rates demand on Hopington C as high. The forecast sheets for OW414 and OW415 use readings to October 7 and a record that begins in 2011.
They are not alone. By the Wire’s count of the report’s table, 47 of the 81 wells in the October 8 report were below normal. Elsewhere in the valley, OW453 at 24015 72nd Avenue in Langley, OW450 in Chilliwack, OW451 in Hope, and OW463 in Mission also read below normal. All four Abbotsford wells, and the Langley wells at Fort Langley Park, 196th Street, 238th Street, 200th Street, Campbell Valley Park, and Aldergrove, read normal or above.
The forecast model, the Centre’s overview explains, combines the observed levels, the ten-day weather forecast, and resampled historical climate, allows for the lag between weather and recharge, and is updated daily. Uncertainty grows with lead time, the model may do worse in conditions unlike its historical record, and the forecasts “should not be used as the sole basis for operational or management decisions.”
A monitoring well reports a water level, not a supply. Below normal at OW414 means the level is lower than three quarters of the readings for this time of year since 2011. It says nothing about how much water stands above the pump in a neighbour’s well. What it does give the owner of a well in either aquifer is a reading at two depths in one hole, and a forecast that stays below normal across the range of past weather it tests.
The Note: A monitoring well is a thermometer, not a tank. If your well is in one of these two aquifers, one of these readings comes from your aquifer, and it reads low.
Who should pay attention: Owners of wells in the Hopington C and West of Aldergrove aquifers, farms irrigating from them, and drillers and pump installers working there this winter. Not all of Langley: of Langley’s seven other monitoring wells in the report, six read normal or above, and one, on 72nd Avenue, also reads below normal.
What to do next: Look up your well in GWELLS and read its aquifer number. If it is 1144 or 33, these readings come from your aquifer. Know your pump’s depth and the static water level on your well record. A well that has lost yield is a pump and well-condition question first, and the forecast will not answer it. If you follow the forecast, read its issue date, because it changes every day. For reading the records around you, see Nearby Water Well Records in BC Are Clues, Not Guarantees.
Checked against: Groundwater Level Forecast Report, issued October 8, 2026; the OW414 and OW415 forecast sheets; GWELLS wells 105642 and 105644 and aquifers 1144 and 33; the chart guide and model overview · checked October 9, 2026
Updates: October 14, 2026 · The Province’s South Coast groundwater conditions report, generated October 14 with readings to October 12 at the two Langley wells (the report’s table runs to October 13; working data, which the Province may revise), classes OW414 as much below normal, at the 7.7 percentile of its 15 years of record, and OW415 as Low, the Province’s class for the lowest level measured for that date in a well’s record. That is a reading, not a forecast. The October 8 forecast report classed both wells as below normal; the conditions report, which divides that class further, puts OW414 in its lowest tenth and OW415 at the bottom of its record for the date. Of the 42 South Coast wells with a reading, 17 read below normal or lower. In the valley, six wells the forecast report does not cover read below normal or lower: OW441 at Abbotsford much below normal, and OW272 (Abbotsford), OW440 (Langley), OW448 and OW449 (Agassiz), and OW457 (Abbotsford) below normal. OW463 at Mission, which the forecast had below normal, still is; OW453, OW450, and OW451, which the forecast also had below normal, now read normal, at the 27.3, 25, and 36.4 percentiles. The four Abbotsford wells the forecast covers still read normal.
