Ag Weather Forum

Canada Weather Favors Lagging Harvest

Doug Webster
By  Doug Webster , DTN Senior Ag Meteorologist

Combining operations are well behind the five-year average across the Canadian Prairies due to a combination of a late start to planting and maturing crops as well as the period of cold, wet weather earlier in September. Compared to 2013 when nearly superb conditions prevailed, harvest is far behind schedule.

Fortunately the weather has shown great improvement during the past week or a little more with mostly dry weather and very warm weather gracing the region. Some record high temperatures have even dotted the landscape during the past few days. This is good news since many crops are late in maturing and the warmth and drier weather will help get crop growth to the final stages of maturation.

The question is whether we can continue to catch favorable weather for another few weeks to allow harvest completion. The answer is a bit clouded but is generally appears favorable for now. Our current stretch of warm, summer-like weather has a couple more days left in it before a downward temperature trend develops during the weekend.

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No big chill is expected, but readings will likely come back down to more normal levels by early next week. The reason for the diminished threat of another very cold outbreak is that the jet stream flow remains west to east and that allows mostly Pacific air to push across the region and keep the increasing cold across northern Canada at bay for now.

One negative to the cooler period coming in a few days will be a period of rain for most areas. Soils remain too wet for some areas and contribute to the delayed harvest. Any rain at this time mostly slows harvest operations.

As we move into early October, the weather pattern appears as though it may become a little more active across Western Canada, but still in fairly favorable to allow harvest work to occur most of the time. If producers can withstand a day or so of showers every so often, combining and swathing should be able to continue most of the time.

The growing season is finished across Alberta and Saskatchewan but for Manitoba the cold weather earlier this month brought frosts of a more spotty nature. During the next week to 10 days, we do not see any significant threats that could end the growing season for Manitoba so any crops that are still maturing should be able to continue to grow.

Current monthly outlooks for October still are mostly for somewhat milder-than-normal weather for the Prairies, but also show precipitation to be surplus. While current weather favors the harvest, we may have to watch for more unfavorable conditions for any harvest work that remains by the time we reach the second week of October and beyond.

Doug Webster can be reached at doug.webster@dtn.com

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