Prairie farmers have filed fewer hail claims than normal despite a wet and stormy growing season so far.
As of July 20, members of the Canadian Crop Hail Association reported 2,650 claims in Saskatchewan, 930 in Alberta and 500 in Manitoba.
David Van Deynze of Manitoba Agricultural Services Corp. said the low numbers are a bit unusual.
“We’ve had a real good number of high humidity, high temperature days so it is somewhat odd,” he said.
In Manitoba, a July 4 storm was responsible for 85 percent of the claims. Many have been cancelled, however, because crop damage was less than five percent. In other cases adjusters are waiting to see how much the crop rebounds.
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That same weekend was responsible for most of the Alberta claims. A July 3 storm affected crops in the areas of Three Hills, Drumheller, Alix, Forestburg, Strome, Vermilion and St. Paul.
But there has also been a series of storms throughout the grain growing region, including July 18 and 19 when farmers in the areas of Red Deer to Millet to east of Camrose saw golf ball sized hail and some crops were totally wiped out.
Storms the same dates in Saskatchewan cut through Lloydminster across to Carrot River and dropped hailstones as large as baseballs in some areas.
Nearly one-quarter of the Saskatchewan claims so far resulted from a July 12 storm that rolled through west of Saskatoon in the Kindersley, Rosetown, Elrose, Outlook and Delisle areas.
There was also a lot of damage and claims filed from the July 7-9 period in the Wilkie, Plenty, Dodsland, Landis, Handel, Watrous, Kenaston, Cudworth, Raymore, Duval, Davidson and Holdfast areas.
Saskatchewan crop specialist Grant McLean said the number of hail claims might be unusually low but many farmers are reporting significant wind and heavy rain damage.
“The storms that are occurring tend to be severe,” he said. “Some of these nice looking crops are getting lodged.”
With some hot windy weather some of the crops will stand back up but some stems might be too damaged to do so.
Van Deynze said lodging is also a problem in Manitoba due to heavy rain.
“Crops will often bounce back once but not twice,” he said.
McLean said there are some great looking crops, particularly north of a line from Yorkton to Indian Head to south of Regina, Moose Jaw and Swift Current.
Many of the storms have been rolling in from the southwest. They are highly variable in intensity and much of the damage has been localized.
Sometimes just four or five kilometres make the difference, McLean said.
