Patti Spurrill had her fingers crossed last week. She’s hoping to get a second cut of alfalfa this year, thanks in part to the glut of rain that spilled into southwestern Manitoba earlier this month.
The three-day rain flooded basements and knocked out a radio station, but it also perked up pastures and hay fields. The sudden soaker dumped about 10 centimetres at the Spurrill farm north of Ninette, Man.
“We’re still growing a lot of pasture,” said Spurrill, “and this will definitely help.”
The heavy rains fell during the first weekend in August. There were unofficial reports of 20 cm in areas south of Brandon. Although the moisture was a boon to some people, it was a bane to others.
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Homeowners at Deloraine found themselves coping with a flood of problems due to the rain. More than 15 cm fell on the town during the three-day deluge.
“It has caused some problems for a lot of people,” said Deloraine mayor Donna Todd. “There were quite a few basements that had water in them.”
Road impassable
Torrential rains also damaged a municipal road near Nesbitt. Heavy runoff carved a deep trench through the road, making it impassable for vehicles. An elevator agent at Nesbitt reported 18 cm of rain at that community.
Not far away, heavy runoff swamped the site of transmission towers for radio station CKLQ, taking it off the air for almost two days.
The scattered showers missed some parts of southwest Manitoba completely, while unleashing a wall of water on others. Boissevain, Wawanesa and Carberry were among the areas where heavy rains were reported.
The rains flooded gullies and filled potholes in fields. In some, hay bales became small islands after being swamped by the water.
Due to the region’s rolling terrain, farmers were able to continue with harvest last week, however, ruts were visible in several fields where equipment passed.
“It’s going to cause a lot of harvesting problems,” said Scott Day, provincial agricultural rep at Boissevain.
“We have all this flooding we can’t see because of the crop canopy.”
Fields will take longer to dry due to the thick canopy.
It’s still too soon to know whether the torrential rains will affect the quality of grain harvested, Day said. Most crops were not quite mature when rains arrived. Because of that, Day doubts there will be serious problems with sprouting.
Needed a drink
Later-seeded crops in the Boissevain area were starting to show signs of heat stress before the rains hit.
The showers were a plus for crops suffering from the brief dry spell, and bolstered crops such as potatoes.
“It’s not all gloom and doom,” said Carberry farmer Eric Adriaansen. “I don’t think it really slowed anything down.”
Adriaansen said some rain gauges in the Carberry area were filled to overflowing by the heavy rains and lodging in some fields left some crops looking as though they had been gathered into stooks.
