Mudslides and flooding have hit B.C.'s lower mainland after a weekend of heavy rain, leading to road closures and evacuation warnings.

About 170 houses in Maple Ridge were flooded Monday and hundreds of people have been told they may have to leave their homes, after the Alouette River spilled its banks.

"We wouldn't live anywhere else," a defiant Nona Coles told CTV British Columbia.

"The dream is to build a flood-resistant house, be above (the water), have walkways above it, and just watch it all come and sit back with your wine."

A flood watch remains for three rivers:

• Cowichan River
• Nicomekl River
• Coldwater River

"We had copious rainfall -- that's an understatement -- the largest rainfall of the season across Vancouver in the last day and a half -- up to 200 millimetres in places," Environment Canada meteorologist David Jones told CTV Newsnet.

"It was all due to the fourth sub-tropically influenced storm of the season to hit Vancouver. This was another Pineapple Express event, that means a weather system that picked up very warm, moist humid air from the latitudes of Hawaii and unloaded it over Greater Vancouver and much of the south coast and the Interior."

RCMP say several roads are closed because of flooding and swollen roadside ditches, including Highway 10 in the Cloverdale area of Surrey and the Maryhill bypass in Port Coquitlam.

The saturated soil may also have prompted a mudslide that closed the Trans-Canada Highway from Rosedale to Hope and east of Hope to Jackass Mountain.

"We can have the westbound lanes cleared probably by (Tuesday) night, but the eastbound lanes will take a minimum of four to five days to get cleaned," said Transportation Ministry spokesperson Barry Eastman.

Although the rain appears to have ended for now on the B.C. south coast, forecasters replaced the heavy rainfall warning with wind warnings during the morning.

Environment Canada said westerly winds of up to 60 kilometres an hour were expected to pummel the coast, with gusts of up to 90 kilometres an hour.

The flood fears prompted NDP public safety critic Mike Farnworth to call for government action along the lower Fraser, which runs through parts of the Lower Mainland.

Public Safety Minister John Les has said his ministry is working hard to address the threat.

Les has told the legislature that his government is consulting with municipalities, regional districts and First Nations to locate the weak spots.

The ministry is also forecasting well-above-normal spring runoff in the Thompson and Peace River basins.

While the flood risk throughout the province has stabilized as a result of less snowfall, flooding potential remains, the ministry said.

Because of a "robust'' start to winter -- with heavy snowfalls from October through mid-January -- officials say most river basins in B.C. have collected above-normal or well-above-normal snowpacks as of March 1.

Areas such as the Okanagan and Kootenays have near-normal snowpacks, but there are no areas of B.C. with below-normal snowpacks, the ministry says.

Flooding will depend on a number of factors, including snowfall and weather conditions during snowmelt in May and June.

Vancouver Island and other coastal drainages such as the Chilliwack River, Alouette River and Squamish River are excluded from spring flooding concerns. They normally experience their high flows during fall and winter rain storms, not from spring snowmelt.

North-central B.C., and the Nechako, upper Fraser, Peace and Skeena rivers are all in the 130 to 150 per cent of normal range.

The rest of the Interior, including the Middle Fraser, Quesnel Highlands, Similkameen, Columbia, Nicola/Coldwater and lower Fraser regions -- have well-above-normal snowpacks in the 110 to 130 per cent of normal range.

The North Thompson and South Thompson are 114 per cent and 110 per cent, respectively.

The Fraser River watershed snow index is 125 per cent of normal. This is the fifth or sixth largest Fraser River snowpack measured since 1953, when detailed snow measurements in the Fraser began.

With reports from CTV British Columbia and files from The Canadian Press