Ag Weather Forum

Higher Temperatures, More Dryness for Canada's Prairies

Doug Webster
By  Doug Webster , DTN Senior Ag Meteorologist
(Graphic courtesy of NOAA)

The long days of summer are in place, but we are seeing a weather pattern evolving that is quite similar to the persistent patterns of the mid and late winter into early spring. This pattern that is developing will feature a strong trough across central and east-central Canada while a strong ridge develops across the western U.S. poking northward into southwest Canada.

Despite an upper air pattern looking like February, we are not expecting winter weather to be attached to this pattern. We will see some of the same anomalies as we saw during the late winter, namely drier-than-normal conditions and above-normal temperatures during the remainder of June and into at least the first week of July.

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The hope of some widespread beneficial rainfall for the dried out central and western Prairies will be minimal at best during the next 10 days and the additional problem of high temperatures are likely to be added to the equation as well. Like last winter, when the western Prairies saw the highest temperature anomalies and Manitoba saw readings a little lower at times, the summer version should produce similar results.

Temperatures could reach as high as 35 to 40 degrees Celsius (95 to 104 Fahrenheit) for some parts of southern Alberta and southwest Saskatchewan during the next five days while readings across Manitoba run close to normal. Rainfall looks spotty at best out west, with Manitoba more in line for a few showers once in a while.

As we move to the middle and end of next week, we might see a modest opportunity for some scattered showers across the northern Prairies as a front drops southward, but this system does not look like a beneficial rain producer. During the past week, we have seen some spotty showers across Western Canada with local areas seeing some help to soil moisture content. The spotty nature of last week's rains have helped a few, but left most without much help.

The cause of the persistent dry weather pattern could be tied to the large area of warmer-than-normal sea surface temperatures across the eastern Pacific and Gulf of Alaska. This large area of warmer-than-normal waters has been in about the same location since last fall and some think has helped with the prevailing ridge through western North America. Today's SST anomaly analysis shows more of what we have seen for many of the past several months and in fact some intensification of the warm waters has been noted during the past month.

While there are many factors that cause and create the weather patterns around the globe at any given time, it appears that this warm blob of water through the Gulf of Alaska may be an important factor in producing the dryness for Western Canada. Given its persistence we unfortunately have to favor the idea of above-normal dryness for the critical next few weeks of crop development period. Temperatures are most likely to be higher across the west than across Manitoba, with rainfall more spotty for the west than across the east. Given this forecast, we will probably see increasing coverage of crop stress and even failure due to dry conditions.

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

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