Ag Weather Forum

Spring Forecast Concerns for W. Canada

Doug Webster
By  Doug Webster , DTN Senior Ag Meteorologist

As the days continue to lengthen and the start of the seeding season grows closer, we see a weather pattern across Canada and the northern U.S. that shows many of the same features that have been in place for the past three months.

The extreme nature of the winter weather has obviously eased, but a continuation of a similar weather pattern well into the spring could lead to some problems for some farmers, while others see pretty good planting conditions.

We continue to see the idea of a cold pool of air centered through northern Quebec and at times across the northern portion of Hudson Bay for the next few weeks based on many of the global forecast models that meteorologists use. This position is a little farther east than it was during the past two spring seasons. Where the cold air will want to hang out during the next two months may have a pretty big impact on when farmers will be able to get going in the fields.

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A standard of the weather pattern for the winter and early spring has been for colder weather and a little more precipitation to cover Manitoba and at times eastern or northeastern Saskatchewan; meanwhile, areas farther west have seen the weather milder -- and sometimes much milder -- along with less precipitation. To date in March most of the Prairies have seen only a little more than 50% of the normal precipitation we would typically see.

The warm ridge of high pressure than has been across the western U.S. and far southwest Canada has kept the main storm track too far north and east to bring the heavy amounts of snow we saw during the past two seasons but Manitoba did fare a little better. The good news is that snow cover is already diminishing across the southwest half of the Prairies, while the downside is that soil moisture will continue to decrease with the warm and many times sunny weather expected during the next week or two.

An early take on spring seeding would be that dryness could become more of a concern across the western or southwestern half of the Prairies despite a much earlier start to the seeding season than last year. The northeastern portion of the Prairies will see a later departure of snow cover and somewhat more chilly conditions, so seeding may begin near or possibly even later than normal for Manitoba.

The key remains with the position of the polar vortex during the next four to six weeks. If the center wobbles about where it has been, then the idea given above may work out, but if the vortex repositions itself farther west, then we may see some cooling and an increase in wet weather, which is not so good for eastern areas and probably mostly good for the west.

Many of the global model forecasts are giving us the idea that things may not change much for a few weeks, but forecasting outward several weeks at this time of year can be an adventure. When the seasons change, the forecast models tend to have less consistency and sometimes do not pick up on general pattern shifts as they occur.

In any case, we should see a better start to the seeding season this year that we saw during the past two years. We will just have to keep an eye on the potential for dryness across central and western areas as the season progresses.

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

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