Hail, wind, tornadoes | Rain was needed in southern Alberta but not so hard and so fast
As the lightning flashed and the winds picked up at their Enchant farm, Greg Stamp and his family hunkered in the basement waiting for the storm to pass.
Glenn and Marie Logan of Lomand watched the internet as radar tracked the major storm cell that came from Montana and spread across southern Alberta as far as Calgary.
The June 5 storm brought 30 to 100 millimetres of rain, hail and two confirmed tornadoes: one in the Taber area at about 8:30 p.m. and two hours later another at Bow Island.
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While the tornados damaged buildings and uprooted trees, hail was a greater villain for farmers in the Taber, Vauxhall and Enchant areas, north and east of Lethbridge.
Logan grows hybrid canola and the next day field inspections revealed an ugly sight.
“If it was later in the year, damage would be 100 percent. It is pretty ugly,” he said. “Some of the early canola was starting to bolt and it is chopped up pretty bad.”
He reported the damage to Alberta Hail and Crop Insurance and now is waiting to see how much of the crop recovers because the storm occurred early in the season.
Greg Stamp figures there was 50 percent damage on fababeans that he seeded April 12. He also made an insurance claim and is not sure how well the crop might recover.
“Usually our storms don’t come this early in the season so I don’t know what to expect,” he said.
Fields of canola, dry beans and cereals were also affected to varying degrees.
Fields that had been tilled were eroded and some farmers have been pumping the water off fields.
Ironically, the region needed rain.
“If we didn’t get that rain we would have started the pivots. Now we won’t irrigate for another week,” said Stamp.
Logan said he needed rain and received 88 mm.
“It is nice to get moisture but we didn’t need it in half an hour,” he said.
Further north in Vulcan county, agriculture fieldman Kelly Malmberg said much-needed moisture was received because fields were drying out.
“It was a pretty good blast of moisture. It set us up for the month of June,” he said.
As for regrowth, every situation is different when crops are hailed, said Lethbridge based agronomist Troy Prosofsky of the Canola Council of Canada.
“It will be a function of the crop stage and the duration of the hail,” he said.
Some fields could be set back two days while others may take two weeks to recover.
“Canola is a very plastic plant and very resilient this time of year,” he said.
If no more stressors like hot weather, diseases or insects come along, most crops should recover reasonably well.
However, this early damage could cause elongated flowering periods. When something like this happens the plant sends out another branch to compensate for the stress.
“It will be a tough go for some growers who had frost early in the season and now they have hail,” he said.
At this time of year reseeding canola is not a good option. Research has shown southern Alberta canola yields drop by 1.8 bushels per day for every day sown after May 1.
He does not believe the damage covered a wide area and so far, most fields were doing well with the expected seven to 10 plants per sq. foot.
“We had a lot going for us this year. We had good warm soil and good moisture,” he said.
Crops will need to be babied and farmers should start checking for insects because increasing numbers of diamondback moth larvae have been reported in the southern Prairies. These defoliate young plants.
