LETHBRIDGE, Alta. – There is one sure thing on the Prairies: weather cycles are as unpredictable as grain markets.
After tracking the northern Plains weather history since 1918, Montana State University researcher Perry Miller has learned that prairie rainfall cycles are random and are becoming increasingly variable.
Miller found that it is more likely to have a dry year following a dry year, but there tends not to be strings of dry years.
“The good news is that there have never been more than three dry years in a row,” said Miller at a southern Alberta conservation conference in Lethbridge Dec. 4.
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Havre, Mont., on the prairie just south of the Alberta-Saskatchewan border, averages 300 millimetres of rain a year. Almost three quarters of that falls between May and August, with the peak in June.
“It’s important that rainfall on the northern Plains peaks when it does, or we couldn’t farm at all,” said Miller, who specializes in increasing crop water use and studying the role of crop diversity in farm production.
In addition, his research showed that growing season rainfall is more important for crops than stored soil moisture.
“Growing-season rainfall is about three times more important than what we’ve got in the soil,” he said. “Growing-season water controls what will happen next year.”
