Western prairie farmers will probably seed into dry soil this spring and pray for rain, weather experts say about the long range weather outlook.
However, they agree that timely rain and generally good growing conditions will dominate most of the Prairies during the summer and harvest season.
The exception will be the Peace River region, which will continue to be dry.
“We’re not so dry out there that we can’t get caught up,” Drew Lerner of World Weather Inc. said in a recent forecast presentation, noting that much of the Prairies has had well below average snowfall.
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Lerner forecasts a drier than normal spring in already parched central and eastern Alberta and west-central Saskatchewan. However, he thinks late spring will bring timely rain and farmers will end up with a generally good growing season.
Canadian Wheat Board weather and crop conditions analyst Bruce Burnett has a similar view. He believes the spring seeding period may be uncomfortably dry for western prairie farmers, but then there’s a good chance timely rain will arrive to save the crop.
The predictions are based on the El Nino weather phenomenon. El Nino events generally cause spring on the western Prairies to be cooler and drier but late spring and early summer to be wetter than average.
“My only fear is that we would see the El Nino degrade more rapidly than is currently expected and would be out of it before it is useful to us,” Burnett said.
