After heavy rainfall and increasing temperatures, snowpack experts say high lake levels are here to stay for some time.

“We had a big some pretty big snowpack from earlier in the winter and now it has to go somewhere. And so now it's coming down here, it's filling the lake up, and we just have to be patient and wait for levels to come down,” said Jim Elser Flathead Lake Biological Station Director.

Elser says water levels like these haven’t been seen in decades.

“Lake levels that were this high were supposedly last in 1964,” said Elser.

With heavy currents and increased runoff Flathead Lake is not only experiencing an increase in water levels, but increased debris and plume of lake sediment.

“You'll always see a plume in the lake of sediment and the lake very quickly clears out within a few weeks, we're seeing a big one this year because we're having big discharge, it's going to last for a while,” said Elser. “A lot of debris comes into the lakes, floating logs, branches, all that sort of stuff and of course suspended sediments that are coming from erosion upstream in the riverbeds and elsewhere in the watershed.

Lake residents near Bigfork found docks covered or even submerged by rising waters leaving them shocked.

“Water kept gushing up through the boards in the dock, when the waves hit, they just shot up, the highest water levels I’ve seen in the years we’ve been here,” said one Bigfork Resident.

Current lake readings still show it sitting over full pool at 14 feet. Flathead County officials are still urging residents to be cautious on or near the lake until events subside.