While southwestern Manitoba digs out from under a blizzard that dumped up to 80 centimetres of snow in two days, closed roads and downed power lines, farm weather specialists are focusing on the bright side.
“If you want a good twist on it, this is the best news the area could have hoped for,” said Guy Ash, an agrometeorologist with Manitoba Agriculture.
Most parts of Manitoba are at about 90 percent soil moisture. But in the southwestern corner of the province, the situation was bleak with moisture levels down to 30 percent in areas such as Melita.
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“Most crops suffer stress below 60 percent or so, so with 30, you’re talking extremely dry,” Ash said.
“It was becoming a situation where unless things turned around, you were going to need some very reliable spring and summer precipitation to grow a crop,” added Paul Bullock, director of weather and crop surveillance for the Canadian Wheat Board.
The blizzard changed that, said Ash, predicting soil moisture is now 60 percent or higher where the storm hit.
Environment Canada climatologist Brian Fehr said southwestern Manitoba and eastern Saskatchewan regions hit by the storm received from 40-80 cm of snow.
“This isn’t going to make a crop or anything like that, but it is going to provide relief to those areas. If we get into spring and it is dry they will have a period of time before getting into serious trouble,” Bullock said.
“We could still have a rip-roaring drought that would hurt things, but it’s given us a little breathing room.”
The biggest concern for farmers in the region was having enough moisture to germinate a crop. In some areas the topsoil was so dry crops like canola, which can’t be seeded deep, would likely not get enough moisture to germinate.
Farmers will now have a wider choice of what they can seed, Bullock said.
“With it being very dry like it has been, you’d be more likely to seed something like wheat or durum wheat that is more drought tolerant and you can seed it deeper, possibly into a layer of moisture to get it germinated,” Bullock said.
“Moisture gives you some choices in situations where it might have been a limiting factor before.”
Southwestern Manitoba may be out of danger, but the same can’t be said for other parts of the Prairies. Almost all of Alberta is still dry, and over half of Saskatchewan is as dry as southwestern Manitoba had been, Bullock said.
“They’re still looking for a snowfall like this, or perhaps it will be rainfall in April to recharge the moisture levels.”
