Ag Weather Forum

Dry for Some, Wetter for Others in Prairies

Doug Webster
By  Doug Webster , DTN Senior Ag Meteorologist
(Graphic courtesy of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada)

Crops continue to be sown at break-neck speed across many areas of the Prairies with Manitoba reporting more than 70% of seeding complete as of May 19. Seeding has surpassed the 50% completion mark across much of Saskatchewan and Alberta based on reports from last week. Seeding progress to date on the whole is the earliest in about a decade for most of the Prairies.

Weather has been on the side of those sowing seeds so far this spring, but some areas are reporting some problems. Across portions of Alberta and Saskatchewan, producers are delaying seeding canola until seedbed moisture levels improve. A similar story is being told by farmers across southwest Saskatchewan where topsoil moisture has been on the decline during the past few weeks.

Since April 1, we have seen less than 40% of the normal precipitation across east-central Alberta and western Saskatchewan, while most of the remainder of Alberta and Saskatchewan have been drier than normal, but by a lesser extent. Southern Manitoba has seen a rebound in the precipitation department and after a dry start now has excess moisture for most of the crop land.

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Very chilly weather with widespread nighttime freezes across most of the region during the weekend into early this week was even accompanied by strong winds and snow for Manitoba. While assessment is still being done as to any damage to some of the earliest emerging crops the early feeling is that most crops were not yet emerged enough to suffer major damage.

Hopefully the cold weather and freeze threats are mostly behind us, but we remain concerned about the potential for drier-than-normal conditions and expanding areas of drying soil conditions during the upcoming weeks. El Nino is quite clearly becoming more of a factor as it strengthens across the equatorial Pacific.

Some model projections predict a major El Nino by this fall. Typically across Western Canada we see warmer and drier-than-average conditions during the crop season during an El Nino and some of these aspects have already been showing their face for some this spring.

The current version of the weather pattern features a split flow jet stream pattern with Canada stuck with a western ridge favoring dry weather while most of the moisture remains tied up across the U.S. Plains induced from a persistent Southwest U.S. trough. It is possible that as we transition into summer that the whole jet stream pattern shifts northward enough to allow for some increased moisture for the Prairies, but widespread rains seem less than likely at this point.

The weather pattern during the next week or so will favor seeding for most unless dry topsoil is a problem as it is across some parts of the west. Little or no rain is expected for most areas and increasing temperatures combined with plenty of sun each day should produce more drying topsoils.

Manitoba will be in the best shape during the coming few weeks with plenty of recent precipitation to help emerging crops, but further west dry weather and drying topsoil moisture could have increasing impact on emerging crops and in some cases remaining seeding of some crops.

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

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