EDMONTON –La Nina may loosen its cold, wet grip on Western Canada this year but not in time for seeding, said an American weather analyst.
It’s not the first time this kind of weather has had the Prairies in its grasp.
“The 1950s had a bias to the wet,” Drew Lerner told a meeting held during Farm Tech in Edmonton Jan. 26.
“It doesn’t just come one year at a time. These are trends.”
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The next highest moisture year for the region was 1956, with 1951, 1953 and 1954 all being far wetter than average. Prairie farmers also saw an abundance of moisture in 1974, 1975 and 1978.
These years all had one thing in common: a persistent La Nina that settled in the eastern Pacific Ocean and wouldn’t budge for a long time.
“The good news is that 2011’s growing season won’t be as wet as 2010,” he said. “The bad news is that it won’t be all that warm, the other thing La Nina’s cool (ocean surface temperatures) cause.”
He said Manitoba and southeastern Saskatchewan will still see more water than they want, but Alberta and western Saskatchewan will be in good shape once the snow melts.
Most of Western Canada has more than 30 centimetres of snow, with areas between Edmonton and Red Deer around 80 cm. The region traditionally receives 10 to 30 cm all winter and the snowiest months are still to come.
Environment Canada said the Prairies’ snow blanket contains more than 90 millimetres of moisture, twice the average.
“That might not be so bad if the soil weren’t fully saturated,” Lerner said. “There is no place for it go when it melts. Some areas will drain, but around Regina, well that’s not good.”
Lerner bases his predictions on 11-year sunspot cycles. The more spots, the warmer the planet.
“The sun is not a constant burner,” he said. “Sometimes it is warmer, sometimes it is cooler.”
The pattern of sunspot activity recorded over the past 20 years nearly mirrors that of a period between 1797 and 1817, known as the Dalton Minimum. Based on this, Lerner feels the Earth will experience a cooling temperature trend over the coming decades.
“I know my predictions fly in the face of global warming proponents, but I think their science isn’t right, and mine is.”
NASA’s reports show that sunspot activity is slowly increasing. The apparent lowest period of the cycle occurred between 2005 and 2008, a match for the Dalton Minimum.
In 1816, dubbed “the year without summer,” Eastern Canada and the United States saw killing frosts in June and snow in August. People starved in Europe as crops failed to mature.
“There was also some volcanic activity that year that cooled things even more,” said Lerner.
The Arctic Oscillation also provides clues about what might happen in Western Canada.
Temperature and snowfall extremes in that model are similar to 1973 and 1974, which were also affected by La Nina. A killing frost in the early fall of 1974 decimated the U.S. grain crop and pushed mid-1970s grain prices to record highs.
Weather and markets analyst Bruce Bennett of the Canadian Wheat Board feels La Nina might loosen its icy grip on North America by late April. It wouldn’t be early enough to aid an early melt, but would allow average temperatures and precipitation for the growing season.
“Most of the models show it going away at that time,” Bennett said during Crop Production Week in Saskatoon.
Lerner said he and other weather scientists are at odds about the potential for an early waning of La Nina.
“Five of the 17 models I use to analyze La Nina tell me it isn’t fading all that fast, which means a cooler growing season until those water temperatures rise later in the season.”
However, he also believes this year has the potential to be much better than last year.
“Spring will be cooler than normal due to a cold March. April will see some high temperatures and freak snowfalls,” he said, which will aid slower melt and ease flooding concerns.
“Early spring will be mainly dry in the region. It should warm up rapidly in late April and early May, especially in western regions.”
He said the eastern Prairies will receive significant rain in the first half of summer, including the Regina Plains and all of Manitoba.
Bennett said little additional moisture is needed to produce a crop in much of that area because of saturated soil and winter supplies.
“Provided they can get into the field.”
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