It’s official.
The spring of 2013 will go down as one of the coldest and latest in recent memory, according to climate experts at the Saskatchewan Re-search Council.
SRC climatologist Virginia Wittrock said there have been later springs and colder ones, but not many that today’s farmers would recall.
“Yes, this has been a long cold winter.… However, it’s not as bad as (some winters) have been in the past,” Wittrock said.
“There have been worse springs than this. There have been longer winters than this. It just hasn’t happened for the past 30 years or so.”
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According to SRC data, this year’s late melt is largely the result of three factors: above average winter precipitation, below normal temperatures in March and April and the lack of a mid-winter melt that normally occurs in January or February.
The SRC operates two state-of-the art weather stations in Saskatchewan: one in Saskatoon and another south of Prince Albert.
The Saskatoon station has accumulated 50 years worth of climate data.
Wittrock said precipitation in Saskatoon this winter was slightly above average. In the six-month period ending March 31, rain and snow accumulations amounted to the equivalent of 91 millimetres of moisture. That was marginally lower than the 91.6 mm measured in the winter of 2011-12 and well below the blustery winter of 1974.
That year, the Saskatoon station received 192 mm of precipitation and the permanent snow pack did not disappear until April 30.
Normally — at least during the past decade — the snow pack at Sask-atoon is gone by the first week in April, if not earlier.
According to Wittrock, this year’s lingering snow pack is reminiscent of conditions that were relatively common in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
This year’s spring is also cold, although not the coldest, she said.
Minimum temperatures during the winter of 2012-13 did not get as low as many other years, but daytime highs were consistently below freezing.
A more telling factor was the consistently cold temperatures in March. This year, the average daily maximum temperature in March was -5.4 C and the average daily minimum was -15.1 C.
By comparison, the average daily maximum last March was 5.2 C and the average daily minimum was -4.5 C, a difference of almost 10 degrees from this year to last.
Wittrock said the snow covering most of Saskatchewan could disappear quickly if daytime temperatures approach seasonal normals or if temperatures rise above zero and rain clouds move in.
Grant McLean, a cropping management specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture, said it is too early for farmers to hit the panic button.
Many prairie farmers are still buried in snow and some are growing anxious to get on the land or at least pull their machinery out of the snow.
However, McLean said the province’s first acres aren’t usually seeded until the last week in April.
Normal temperatures in the last half of April and no major interruptions in May could allow growers to still get the majority of their acres in and finish their spring seeding operations on schedule.
“Certainly its frustrating now for the individuals who are trying to get around and get things organized in anticipation of the spring season,” McLean said.
“We’re probably going to see some delays, but I think it’s more dependent now on the weather that we get in the next two to three weeks.”
Wittrock said farmers in many parts of Western Canada headed into winter with low soil moisture.
A late crop sown into moisture is always better than an early one sown into dust, she added.
