It’s so dry around Fairview, Alta., that the weeds aren’t growing enough to make fall spraying worthwhile.
The Peace River region has had only 40-60 percent of normal rainfall this growing season, leaving farmers to hope predictions of slightly above normal precipitation in fall and winter come true, even if it also means a return to a cold winter.
“Last year, I put this thing on the wall that said they were predicting the area would be warmer and drier than usual, and they were right,” said Dale Seward, Alberta Agriculture crop specialist at Fairview.
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“Now they are predicting La Nina where it is going to be colder and wetter.”
Seward said an inch of rain would be welcome right now.
“It would help clear the green out of the canola still unharvested, and soften up the soil enough so they can get out and work it properly. The fellows that try to cultivate say the ground is so gol’ darn hard it’s making lumps and they have to quit after one go around because it just about pulls the machinery apart.”
The Peace is among a handful of regions still suffering from extremely dry weather that earlier this year threatened all of the Prairies.
Another is a large region around Coronation and Consort in east-central Alberta, spreading to the Unity area of western Saskatchewan.
Although moisture is good in most of Manitoba, eastern Saskatchewan and southern Alberta, showers will be welcome this fall in western Saskatchewan and eastern Alberta.
So it is good news that in the Pacific Ocean, water temperatures are cooling.
Currents and streams
Rick Lee, of the Canadian Institute for Climate Studies in Victoria, B.C., said prairie weather is influenced by the way sea temperature in the Pacific affects ocean currents and the jet stream.
When the water temperature climbs in the east central Pacific it is called an El Nino, Spanish for the child, because it often develops around Christmas.
That is the situation that developed last year and which influenced weather through the winter and into this summer.
It contributed to the fact that Canada registered seven consecutive months of record warm weather. On the Prairies, the mild winter was accompanied by little snow cover.
“All that is behind us now and, unlike the early 1990s when we had a series of El Nino years, the likelihood of getting a repeat of this is very unlikely,” Lee said.
All indications are that the east-central region of the Pacific is cooling to a level below normal, leading to what is called a La Nina, or the girl child.
It sets up a series of events that tend to result in cold arctic air settling down over the Prairies, he said.
“What normally happens during a La Nina year is that there is an increase in precipitation and snow pack in the British Columbia and Alberta Rockies and there is a tendency for increased precipitation to occur through the southern Prairies as well, during the winter,” Lee said.
He added it is impossible to predict in detail La Nina’s effects, but he noted the last La Nina influenced the cold and snowy winter of 1996-97, which saw the rare sight of blizzards in B.C’s. Lower Mainland, causing barn roofs to collapse under the weight of deep snow.
Ted O’Brien, who watches El Nino and La Nina for the Prairie Farm
Rehabilitation Administration, said every one is different but some trends are emerging.
Finally lets go
For example, in years where El Nino dominates the weather, the dryness that grips winter and spring tends to loosen its hold by summer.
“We tend to move into a more average condition so there tends not to be a drought in summer, although there is a tendency for pasture and first cut hay to suffer because of the dry fall, winter, spring,” O’Brien said from Regina.
On the other hand, in years dominated by La Nina, moisture conditions going into summer are acceptable, but summers might be dry.
“There have been a few years, and they were the recent (La Nina) years, that in the summers following there have been summer drought situations, but it doesn’t statistically hold up when you look at a lot of the La Ninas.”
