“There’s still a little bit of moisture there. [During] these hot, windy days everything dries so quickly. A nice rain would be wonderful,” he said. 

Dyck, who was the communications director for Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers and now the principal of the Burr Forest Group, noted the pace of spring planting in Manitoba’s Red River Valley region had noticeably picked up after a later than usual start. 

“It looked like it was going to be a late spring. We’re finished seeding,” he said in an interview Tuesday; his soybeans went into the ground a couple of weeks ago.  

“Last year we finished on June 9,” he added.

From what Dyck surmised, the amount of acres seeded with soybeans, as well as pulses, has increased this year, at least in the valley region. 

“One indicator of that is how busy the implemented dealers are renting out their rollers. The waiting lists are long,” he said. 

Manitoba Agriculture pegged soybean planting at 90 per cent province wide as of Tuesday. As for the central region, the department placed soybeans at the V1 stage with rolling continuing on some fields. Other areas of the province were 75 to 95 per cent done planting. 

Another issue Dyck pointed out that posed a challenge this spring was fertilizer. Not so much its overall supply but rather getting it to the fields, as suppliers seemed to be short on trucks to move product to where farmers needed it. That may have led to farmers switching from other crops to soybeans, he said. 

As farmers prepared for spring planting Statistics Canada projected Manitoba soybean acres at about 1.56 million, well up from last year’s 1.13 million.  

— Glen Hallick reports for MarketsFarm from Winnipeg.

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In Edmonton, Trudeau received an update on firefighting efforts by Canadian soldiers sent to help provincial firefighting and recovery efforts since Thursday. More troops are expected to join in the coming days, according to the Alberta government.

The widespread blazes have marked an intense start to wildfire season in Alberta, forcing more than 30,000 people out of their homes at one point and shuttering at least 319,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd), or 3.7 per cent of national production.

The first 11 days of May have set seasonal heat records in several parts of Alberta, including Edmonton, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada.

Lt. Col. Ben Schmidt, one of the army officials who briefed Trudeau, told him about the regions most at risk and how a lack of rain in the forecast was “a huge challenge.”

The forecast for Alberta shows a cold front sweeping through starting Tuesday evening that would bring gusty winds, a slight chance of a thunderstorm, but not much rain, said Sara Hoffman, a meteorologist with Environment Canada.

“We’re very concerned about the possibility of dry lightning in an area that’s already got a pretty high fire risk,” Hoffman said. Hot and dry conditions are expected ramp up again from Friday and are unlikely to ease at least until early next week.

“I don’t believe the worst is behind us,” Alberta Wildfire agency official Christie Tucker said Monday at a briefing.

As of Monday afternoon, 87 fires were burning across Alberta, with 25 considered out of control. About 1.32 million acres are estimated to have burned so far in 2023 in 466 known wildfires.

“Our peak burning period, which is when the temperatures are at their highest and the fuels are at their driest, is still in front of us,” Alberta Wildfires official Josee St-Onge said at a briefing Sunday afternoon.

“It’s too soon to say when we’re going to see the peak of this wildfire season. … We are going to continue to be challenged.”

As of Sunday afternoon, over 19,300 people were evacuated from wildfire areas under 14 evacuation orders, with another eight areas on evacuation alert.

Provincial and county officials on Sunday were working to set up fireguards around Grande Prairie, a city of about 68,000 in Alberta’s Peace region. Parts of the surrounding County of Grande Prairie have been among areas subject to evacuation orders since May 5.

Members of organizations including the Alberta Association of Agricultural Societies and Alberta Auction Markets Association have offered up facilities for penning evacuated livestock.

The province also recently recommended producers call its 310-LAND (5263) number to discuss emergency grazing options, and noted it is taking applications for temporary grazing on public lands.

Benchmark Canadian heavy crude prices tightened last week to multi-month highs on concerns about the wildfires.

Late on Sunday, Paramount Resources said that due to the fires a third-party gas processing plant and some Paramount fields were shut, and it had curtailed 45,000 boepd.

Vermilion Energy said on Monday it had restored 60 per cent of the 30,000 boepd that it previously shut in.

— Reporting for Reuters by Ismail Shakil in Ottawa, Anna Mehler Paperny in Toronto and Rod Nickel in Winnipeg. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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That’s the assessment from Drew Lerner, president and senior agricultural meteorologist at World Weather Inc. at Overland Park, Kansas.

While the western half of the Canadian Prairies will remain in a drought, Lerner said that isn’t the case for the eastern half of the region. The outlook for that portion of the Prairies called for improved rains in the summer, he said.

“May has always stood out being an anomalously drier month and it’s verifying that very well,” Lerner said, adding he’s quite encouraged by the prospects for rain during the balance of the month.

As for large portions of Alberta and west-central Saskatchewan, the meteorologist noted he doesn’t see an end to drought anytime soon. “It’s going to take a while for it to go away.”

As for the U.S. northern Plains, significant portions of North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota were having a difficult time drying out this spring. He said excessive snowfall led to flooding in a number of areas — but not as bad as expected due to a lack of frost in the ground, which helped to absorb excess moisture.

“But they got rain over the weekend and they will get more rain coming up this week. So that will obviously further prolong the drying that is so badly needed,” Lerner said, estimating planting in the area should start during the third week of May.

The story for the southern Plains, which remains mired in a severe drought, could improve a little, he said.

“There’s going to be a wetter scenario playing out a little bit later this week,” as he forecast scattered showers and thunderstorms.

Lerner pointed to Oklahoma and Texas at likely to get the best rains. Meanwhile Kansas, Colorado and perhaps a part of Nebraska should see some precipitation in coming days.

— Glen Hallick reports for MarketsFarm from Winnipeg.

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Corn futures slumped on forecasts for favourable Midwest planting weather and lagging U.S. export sales, while soybeans edged higher in a technical and short-covering bounce from Friday’s six-month lows.

Grain traders focused on forecasts for continued good corn and soybean seeding weather and on recent rainfall totals in U.S. winter wheat production areas. Sinking wheat prices anchored grain markets in general.

Chicago Board of Trade July soft red winter wheat futures fell 15-1/2 cents to $6.18-1/4 per bushel after touching the lowest level for a most-active contract since July 2021 during the session (all figures US$).

Hard red winter wheat fell to the lowest in 15-1/2 months despite a drought-reduced harvest outlook.

“We’ve got ample global supply prospects moving into this 2023-24 crop year and (U.S.) wheat is just searching for demand,” said Brian Basting, commodity research analyst at Advance Trading.

“That rain in the southwest salvaged whatever wheat was there… But in the Midwest, prospects for the soft wheat crop look really promising,” he said.

Analysts polled by Reuters expect the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to report improved winter wheat conditions in a weekly report due later on Monday, although the crop rating likely remained among the lowest on record.

CBOT July corn futures ended 1/2 cent lower at $5.84-1/2 a bushel while July soybeans rose 8-1/4 cents to $14.27-1/2 a bushel.

The corn and soybean markets are facing headwinds as large Brazilian crops are eating into demand for U.S. supplies.

Meanwhile, the European Commission said Friday it reached a deal in principle to allow Ukrainian grain shipments to resume through five EU countries that had imposed restrictions.

— Reporting for Reuters by Karl Plume in Chicago; additional reporting by Naveen Thukral in Singapore and Nigel Hunt in London.

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The east has enough moisture — and in some cases too much. And it gets progressively drier toward the west, with portions of Alberta nearing critical condition, according to one weather watcher.

Bruce Burnett, weather and markets director for the MarketsFarm division of Glacier FarmMedia, said the soil moisture picture is better than in past years, but still concerning in some regions.

“We are a little bit better than we were last year for moisture, especially topsoil moisture, because of the way some of the winter precipitation patterns have been,” he said. “But realistically the subsoil moisture remains very short and some key growing areas, especially western parts of Saskatchewan and southern Alberta.

“That’s specifically the area I’m most concerned about,” he added.

Burnett added the Prairie winter was a relatively mild one, especially in the western half, with the coolest temperatures also seen in the east of the region.

“We didn’t have a brutal winter in terms of temperatures,” he said.

Alberta dry

Laura Richard, an agroclimate analyst with AAFC, says a long, cold winter has made soil moisture detection in Alberta difficult, thanks to extended snow cover.

Going by winter precipitation, however, southern Alberta is looking strong while the rest of the province — particularly the central, northeast and Peace regions — is going to need a spring recharge as it continues to bounce back from the 2021-22 drought.

“Generally speaking, regions south of Calgary have gotten between 60 and 115 per cent of average precipitation so those are our areas of real recovery,” she said. “The southern areas also received good fall moisture going into winter.

“Unfortunately there’s a big swath between Edmonton and Calgary as well as the northeast where they’ve only received 40 to 60 per cent of normal precipitation. That’s not dire, but given the dry conditions these areas went into winter with there’s still some concern over the soil moisture.”

The same goes for parts of the Peace, Richard said.

“Southern portions of the Peace got more precipitation but the central and northern parts were definitely in that less than 60 per cent of normal precipitation.”

If there’s any comfort for producers in drier areas, it’s the fact that spring rains are what Alberta farmers generally count on even in the best of years.

“We know for sure that it’s the rains in June and July that really determine the quality of the crops and that’s how Alberta actually gets the majority of its moisture,” Richard said.

Snowpack generally looks good in dry areas around Edmonton and the Peace. However, it can be hard to count on until it’s melted.

“Just because snow falls in one location doesn’t mean that’s where it’s going to melt and percolate through the soils,” she said.

“It depends on how quickly it melts, how much rain we get and what our temperatures are like — all of that can really affect where that moisture actually gets into the soil. So until we have that snowmelt it’s really hard to predict where the areas of greatest concern are going to wind up being.”

Saskatchewan variable

In Saskatchewan the soil moisture situation seems to be reasonable in most of the eastern part of the province, except for the extreme southeast corner, but getting drier to the west.

Matt Struthers is a crop extension specialist with the Moose Jaw office of Saskatchewan Agriculture and is editor of the province’s weekly crop report. He said south and west of his location, the moisture picture gets “a little spotty,” with areas of adequate snowfall this winter interspersed with areas that didn’t see much accumulated snowfall.

“As you move into the southwest — around Swift Current, Shaunavon and Consul — it’s a bit drier this spring, and they’re likely to need some timely spring rains,” he said.

Speaking with Glacier FarmMedia on April 11, he noted the slower start to the spring might be a positive, provided it didn’t get too late for seeding to be accomplished in a timely manner.

“Being that it’s a bit later, that may help conserve that moisture and aid germination once we get that seed into the ground,” he said. “But of course, people — including me — might be a little anxious about how long we might be delayed.”

Farming in the region is a question of managing around the variability of its climate, he said, and noted that in just the past couple season the province’s farmers have coped with significant variability. Spring 2021 was very dry. Spring of 2022 was really wet in the eastern half of the province. And this year is a late spring.

“Historically, we’ve been here before, we’ll be here again, I don’t really start to worry until July rolls around and another heat dome sets up,” he said.

Some good news accompanying the slow spring is flying under the radar, he noted — namely, that cooler weather and moist conditions are likely taking a bit out of the grasshopper population as larvae and nymphs succumb to the conditions.

“Last year this area had a big problem,” he said. “We had a dry spring, it warmed up quickly, and the grasshopper population thrived.”

The cooler weather might delay seeding, but it’s also delaying the pests, he noted — a case of Mother Nature both giving and taking away.

“I’m hoping for a lot of give this year,” he said with a chuckle.

Keystone OK

Timi Ojo echoed that soil moisture levels appear to be adequate across most of Manitoba heading into spring seeding.

“I wouldn’t expect that we would have an issue with soil moisture this year,” said Ojo, an agriculture meteorology specialist for Manitoba Agriculture.

“In most places, soils were sitting at about 80 to 100 per cent of their available water holding capacity (AWC) from the fall.”

In a typical spring, even if there hadn’t been a late-season storm and even if the ground hadn’t remained frozen longer than normal, the situation would still look pretty similar in terms of soil moisture, especially with AWC numbers where they currently sit, he said.

“Most of the precipitation received over the winter doesn’t actually have a significant impact directly on soil moisture,” Ojo explained. “The two main pathways for precipitation are either to infiltrate the soil or to flow overland. And in the spring, one of the things we see is that most of the precipitation is partitioned towards overland runoff.”

The only areas of the province that may have concerns with soil moisture are areas that were dry in the fall (areas south and west of Duck Mountain, for instance), or areas with low water holding capacity to begin with because of having sandy, coarse soils (the southwest corner of the province around Melita and Pierson). But even in those areas, Ojo said, producers shouldn’t panic.

“I wouldn’t be too worried about it,” he said. “It’s quite early; we expect to have some spring showers coming through.”

While Ojo said farmers are unlikely to see delays in seeding similar to those that emerged last year after the province was hammered with three consecutive Colorado lows, a different weather-related issue might hamper efforts to get crops established this year. With soils still frozen and below-normal temperatures projected between now and June, soil temperature could be a concern for farmers.

“We likely won’t have as much warming as we’d like,” he said. “If the soil temperature is not warming up enough, the seed is going to be in the ground for much longer, and it won’t germinate quickly,” he cautions. “Be mindful of that and watch the soil temperature at seeding depth.”

Weather watching

As always, Burnett said, it’s going to be a balancing act between soil moisture, which gives crops their start, and timely rainfall in the growing season.

“Most of the precipitation that we receive in the Prairies are in the May-June-July-August period,” he said. “If we don’t get normal precipitation during that time frame, and especially if we don’t get it at the right times, then we certainly see crops stress developing.”

Those areas with the lowest subsoil moisture levels are, unsurprisingly, at the highest risk.

“The problem with that is we have no, shall we say, capacity, to withstand severe periods of drought during the growing season,” he said. “So if you get into a dry spell in, let’s say, the first three weeks of July, then you see a lot of stress developing in the crops.”

Subsoil moisture won’t protect the crops entirely, but it’s a decent buffer against the vagaries of nature, as many producers will remember from the recent years of drought in the region, Burnett said.

In the short term he’ll have his eye on southern Manitoba, particularly the Red River Valley, as it works its way through any flooding issues and the late spring.

“It’s probably going to be about another three or four weeks before some farmers get on the fields just because of how much moisture there is around,” he said.

He says he’ll also be monitoring the shifting weather patterns. The La Nina phase that’s been affecting weather has ended and been replaced by a neutral phase that’s likely to be replaced by an El Nino.

“So that means that we probably are gonna see a different weather pattern than we’ve been experiencing for the last few years,” Burnett said.

— Reporting for Glacier FarmMedia by Gord Gilmour, with files from Don Norman and Jeff Melchior.

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“The coastal warming in the eastern Pacific may foreshadow changes across the Pacific basin. Therefore, an El Niño watch has been issued, and the range of possibilities toward the end of the year includes a strong El Niño,” the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center (CPC) said.

Neutral conditions would prevail through spring, the CPC added.

The El Niño phenomenon is a warming of ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific, sometimes causing crop damage, flash floods or fires.

“We note that a transition to El Niño, widely expected to occur during the second half of 2023, would be expected to weigh on rice yields across Southeast Asia, Mainland China, and both southern and eastern India,” Fitch Solutions said in a note last week.

Cereal and oilseed crops across Asia are forecast to face hot and dry weather, with meteorologists expecting the El Niño weather pattern to develop in the second half of the year, threatening supplies and heightening concerns over food inflation.

On Monday, the Japan weather bureau also pointed to a 60 per cent chance of an El Niño pattern during summer.

But for some regions, El Niño could be beneficial in the near term. Argentina, which is currently facing drought conditions, could see improved weather.

It could also boost yields for U.S. cotton farmers, who were forced to abandon a big chunk of cropland in 2022 after a crippling drought.

According to Environment Canada, El Niño’s effects on Canada are seen mostly during winter and spring, when it’s associated with milder-than-normal conditions in western, northwestern and central parts of the country.

Generally, Environment Canada said, El Niño does not significantly impact Eastern Canada — including the Maritimes — but has been associated with reduced tropical cyclone activity in the Atlantic Ocean.

This week’s predictions also call for El Niño to damp down the storm outlook for the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season.

— Reporting for Reuters by Ashitha Shivaprasad with additional reporting by Arpan Varghese in Bangalore. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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In Monterey County along the state’s central coast, communities near the still-rising Salinas River were under an evacuation order, as authorities warned that the cresting waterway could cut off homes and businesses from essential services.

As many as 19 people have been killed in the storms, including two deaths announced on Wednesday — one person found dead in a submerged car in Sonoma County north of San Francisco, and another who was pulled from the American River in El Dorado County on Jan. 3.

A five-year-old boy swept away in San Luis Obispo County had still not been found by Wednesday evening.

At least two more storm systems were set to pound California and the Pacific Northwest starting Friday and over the weekend, the National Weather Service said, including another atmospheric river, systems of dense moisture funneled into California from the tropical Pacific. The state has already been hit with seven such weather systems over the past two weeks.

Precipitation from the storms will fall as rain along the coast and snow in the Sierra Nevada and other mountain ranges, the National Weather Service said.

Cut off from services

In Monterey County, water from prior storms continued to swell the Salinas River, officials said. Some residents of the Monterey Peninsula and parts of the Salinas area could be cut off from other communities for as many as three days as roads flood.

“My husband went and got some provisions, just things we needed, so if we’re going to be here two to three days or however long we may be stranded, we’re good to go,” said Diane Souza, a retired office manager who decided to ride out the storm in the community of Spreckels near the river.

The couple put sandbags around their garage, which sits lower than the rest of the house, and put together a bag with emergency items in case they need to flee.

Not far away, the muddy Salinas River flowed at a steady pace, widening and encroaching on nearby trees. The tops of fences could be seen just above the rising water.

Monterey County Sheriff Tina Nieto said her officers had gone door-to-door in communities affected by evacuation orders, urging people to leave. She said the river was expected to hit flood stage by 11 p.m. Thursday night and remain high through the weekend.

Dozens of roadways across the state were made impassable by mudslides and snow as the state’s department of transportation urged drivers to stay off impacted roads until crews could clear the way.

In the state capital of Sacramento, crews continued to clear fallen trees and restore power on Thursday, aiming to complete as much of the work as possible before rains begin again on Friday.

The heavy rains have eased California’s historic drought but not ended it, the U.S. Drought Monitor showed Thursday. The state is no longer considered to be in extreme drought or exceptional drought, the two worst categories, but much of the state is still considered to be experiencing moderate or severe drought conditions.

Even with more atmospheric rivers in the immediate forecast, the state’s water system will remained strained in coming years without new infrastructure to capture more storm water, restore flood plains and recycle wastewater.

— Reporting for Reuters by Sharon Bernstein; additional reporting by Nathan Frandino.

Explainer: Why weeks of rain in California will not end historic drought

By Daniel Trotta

Reuters — California has been deluged since Dec. 26 by seven atmospheric rivers that have dumped up to 76 cm of rain over some areas, but the drought that has gripped the western U.S. remains far from over.

Virtually none of the storms has reached the Colorado River basin, which means the river that provides drinking water to 40 million people in seven states will continue to be endangered.

Even with more atmospheric rivers in the immediate forecast, and larger and more frequent ones predicted in the future, California cannot solve its long-term water crisis without major infrastructure investments to capture more storm water, restore flood plains and recycle wastewater.

Meanwhile, California’s US$50 billion agricultural industry continues to consume 80 per cent of the state’s supply.

Weather whiplash

Climate change means climate extremes. As California experiences more severe droughts and heat waves, its occasional wet years are expected to be excessively rainy. But the state’s water infrastructure, mostly built in the 20th century when the population was barely half of today’s 40 million, is ill-equipped for the new situation.

On Dec. 14, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California declared a drought emergency for all 19 million people in the region. A few weeks later, the state was underwater with major flooding.

Despite a deluge that by one estimate has been expected to dump more than 80 trillion litres, the state’s major reservoirs remain well below their historic average. The largest reservoirs, at Shasta and Oroville, are still at 42 and 47 per cent of capacity, according to state data.

The shortfall underscores the severity of the drought. A report published in the journal Nature last year found 2000 to 2021 to be the driest 22-year period for southwestern North America in at least 1,200 years.

Infrastructure deficit

The state’s infrastructure, largely a network of cement canals, lacks the capacity to capture excess stormwater.

Irrigation and flood control projects were largely designed to convey water as quickly as possible in straight lines. That deprives flood plains of water taking a natural meandering path that would better protect adjacent cities from floods while also helping recharge the aquifer below.

With temperatures rising, snowpack in the mountains is melting more rapidly each spring, and the state lacks enough storage capacity to conserve the runoff.

California Governor Gavin Newsom plans to ramp up infrastructure spending, including US$8.6 billion budgeted for drought and flood management next year. Billions more are available under a major U.S. infrastructure law signed by President Joe Biden in 2021.

But until that money is converted to projects, excess stormwater will continue to drain into the Pacific Ocean.

Colorado River under stress

Arid southern California relies on two external sources to slake its thirst: aqueous northern California, through massive state and federal conveyance systems; and the Colorado River, under a century-old compact that assigns its water to seven states, with California receiving the largest allotment.

But the compact was written after an unusually wet period, assigning the states more water than the river can now provide. Even as the Colorado River basin faces its own drought, and the atmospheric rivers provide no relief, the Colorado River suffers more from overuse than from a lack of precipitation.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has warned the seven states in the compact — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — that they must negotiate a new agreement to reduce consumption 15-30 per cent by Jan. 31 or else face mandatory cuts imposed by the federal government.

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The word “stubble” was used in those days as we still summerfallowed about half of the land in Saskatchewan. This map was intended to provide information about areas where stubble-seeded crops had a good chance if soil fertility was taken care of.

That map happened by accident. At the time, we had dozens of on-farm field fertilizer tests across the province. In doing soil probing for those tests, we discovered in the fall, the depth of moist soil could be determined by a single soil probe in a quarter section and often did not change over many miles. The moist soil came from rain that fell after the crop quit using water. The assumption was the crop had used all available water to four feet and we were just mapping the wetting front from the fall rains.

Saskatchewan Agriculture had weekly crop reports, as they still do, and those reports had rainfall data from hundreds of reporters in almost all of the many rural municipalities of the day. I picked a day in August to start counting the fall rains, and it was all done with a hand calculator on paper. A map was made of rainfall and that was checked with field probing — mostly with projects where folks were already in the field.

In the 1970s, Agriculture Canada’s Saskatoon Research Station made a Grasshopper Forecast Map, which was posted on all of the hundreds of walls of wooden elevators of the day. We used that base map and distribution system.

[RELATED] Alberta Farmer Express: All in all, it wasn’t a bad crop year – and that’s welcome news

The hand-scratched, original, rough copy of that first soil moisture map now rests comfortably in the University of Saskatchewan archives for future generations to find.

Making the three-province 2023 map

As in previous years, the map is based on rainfall data in 2022 with emphasis on rain after the 2022 crop stopped using water. In some cases, rainfall during crop growth is more than the crop can use, so there may be some left over to add to fall rains. The data sources for 2022 are the same as previous years.

Alberta Agriculture’s online weather station data viewer is a great source of rainfall data. There is a very high density of stations, and it is easy to select as many as seven stations at a time and generate a graph of daily precipitation and on a cumulative basis.

The rainfall graph at Oyen (see below) is what can be obtained for up to seven selected nearby stations. It is very good data for local and regional rainfall for the entire season. Note that Oyen had only seven inches of rain all year, so there will be nothing left for next year.

Saskatchewan does not have a weather station network, but Saskatchewan Agriculture has 189 crop reporters who keep track of rain and forward data to Moose Jaw. Sask Ag then prepares weekly and cumulative rainfall maps, which are of great value in tracking soil moisture.

Manitoba also has many weather stations and rain data can be easily accessed on a daily basis for all of the stations. Manitoba also has soil moisture maps based on a network of permanent soil moisture sensors at 5, 20, 50 and 100 centimetres. Some individual sites show much more soil moisture than I have mapped.

Spot checking of 2022 daily rainfall data for the few remaining Environment Canada sites is also used to help make decisions on where lines are drawn.

The 2023 map

It is no surprise the 2023 map has a lot of red and yellow ink (see at top). On my Dundurn farm, we had two inches of rain in May and two inches in June. The tap turned off in July and the high temperatures quickly sucked up any little showers that came along.

Even the mountain areas of western Alberta had little rain and the rest of the province was very dry.

More snow jobs and possibilities for 2023

For the past two years, snow has been a big contributor in keeping the truckers busy at harvest time. In the hilly land at my Dundurn farm, snowbanks can pile up at high elevations on the lee side of a hill. The sloughs were all full of snow and drained down quickly into the dry soil.

The photo below shows the old tree row that catches snow. The big slough was seldom seeded in wet years. Some years, I had three, two-inch pumps going for many hours to pump the slough so I could seed some of it.

In the past two years, the slough was piled high with snow but drained out quickly as soon as the snow melted. My renter planted canola in 2022 and managed more than 30 bushels with only two inches of rain in May and two inches in June. He also knew to combine through the good spots at two miles per hour so all of the canola went into the tank. Modern combines can thresh much more than they can separate when it comes to canola.

The snow that fell in late October and early November 2022 came with warm weather, so there was some concern about a frozen surface crust that would prevent rapid entry of spring snowmelt and lead to runoff to sloughs. All available evidence suggests that is not true.

The high point on my Dundurn home quarter is 425 feet above the elevation at the University of Saskatchewan campus. Higher elevations usually get more snow than the plains and that was the case for the early November snow this year.

My neighbours are finding dry soil beneath the snow when they move snow to clear the yards. I also checked with Phillip Harder at the U of S, who has research projects that document the situation, and he also found the soil beneath the snow remains like a sponge to soak up the snowmelt. That all means we should be able to rely on snow once again to help make up for some of the rainfall deficit.

As usual, here’s to 10 inches of rain May through July in 2023. Ten inches of rain makes us all good farmers.

The post Les Henry: Soil moisture map for 2023 appeared first on Grainews.

Following the worst drought in California history, the state has been receiving very intense precipitation that’s brought flooding to its northern areas.

“It will start up again the night of Jan. 4 and will continue into Monday or Tuesday of next week,” Lerner said, warning that what’s to come is to double the precipitation already received, “with more risks of flooding in northern California and substantial snow accumulations in the Sierra Nevadas.”

The meteorologist, founder and president of World Weather, said the vast quantities of rain and snow have been the result of the combination of three factors.

“The most important is the negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) combined with weakening La Nina conditions,” Lerner said. “There’s been some warm water between Hawaii and California, which has been out there for a while, helping to fuel the storm intensity as the winds aloft blow across that region.”

Media reports said the system is to move eastward across the continental U.S., bringing sizeable amounts of precipitation to a number of states. However, Lerner doesn’t believe it will have much impact on dry or drought-stricken areas of the central and southern Plains.

“There will not be enough precipitation to counter the evaporative moisture losses that have occurred in the past and those that are coming,” he said.

Lerner mentioned one model that called for heavy precipitation during the second week of January.

“I think that model was out of line with reality,” he surmised.

Come spring, Lerner said, there will be better opportunities for rain on the Plains and other areas facing dry conditions.

— Glen Hallick reports for MarketsFarm from Winnipeg.

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The storm is connected to the same freezing weather system that has enveloped much of the U.S. ahead of the Christmas holiday weekend, thwarting travel plans and leaving more than a million homes and businesses without power.

The storm was expected to affect about two-thirds of all Canadians as it moves across Canada’s two most populous provinces, Ontario and Quebec, toward Atlantic Canada, said Environment Canada meteorologist Steve Flisfeder in Toronto.

“Every winter we expect storms (but) this one is significant,” he said. “We’re seeing differing weather types that are all leading to different impacts… affecting a very large population base in a short time span.”

Winter storms have increased in frequency and intensity over the past 70 years, according to the U.S. Global Change Research Program. This is in part due to climate change, according to the Environmental Defense Fund, because the planet evaporates more water into the atmosphere as it warms, leading to more overall precipitation.

Canada’s second-largest carrier WestJet proactively cancelled all flights at airports in Toronto, Ottawa and the province of Quebec, citing bad weather. The largest carrier, Air Canada, also warned of delays and cancellations.

Nearly 320 flights or about a third of all scheduled arrivals and departures on Friday were cancelled at Canada’s busiest airport, Toronto’s Pearson, with another 200 delayed, according flight tracking website FlightAware.

Alberta, Canada’s main cattle-producing province, was under extreme cold warnings from Environment Canada.

Some farmers positioned portable wind breaks and used treed areas to protect their herds from potentially deadly winds, said Karin Schmid, beef production and extension lead at Alberta Beef Producers.

Cold temperatures can kill cattle but such deaths are rare, and Schmid said she was not aware of any this week.

In Ontario, stormy weather reduced transport of cattle to feedlots and slaughter plants, but the holiday season is slow anyway, said Jack Chaffe, who runs a 2,000-head feedlot.

The power utility in Ottawa said it had restored electricity for nearly 100,000 customers and was working to fix outages for 9,000 more. In Quebec, nearly 270,000 were without electricity on Friday afternoon.

Ontario Provincial Police Sergeant Kerry Schmidt said police had received reports of up to 100 vehicles involved in multiple collisions that have closed off a major highway near London, Ont.

“The wind and snow is blowing in and today is going to be a tough day for a lot of drivers,” Schmidt said in a video message posted on Twitter. “The best place is off the highway.”

In British Columbia, the storm brought several inches of snow overnight before transitioning to freezing rain and ice pellets, forcing the closure of key bridges and roads.

Conditions there are expected to continue changing as temperatures rise and bring heavy rainfall throughout Saturday and into Sunday, said Terri Lang, an Environment Canada meteorologist who tracks western Canadian weather.

“It’s going to be kind of a sludgy, sloppy Christmas, it looks like,” Lang said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Ismail Shakil in Ottawa and Rod Nickel in Winnipeg.

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