It wasn’t a billion-dollar rainfall, but it should paint some of Manitoba’s pastures and fields a brighter shade of green for a while, according to Andy Nadler, an agricultural meteorologist based in Carman.
“It’ll hold things off for a week, depending on the temperatures,” he said.
Nearly two days of soggy weather over the weekend distributed moisture around the province, and for once mainly fell in the places where it was needed most, he said.
In some cases, the rain fell on extremely dry soils, with parched Pierson in the extreme southwestern corner getting more than 25 millimetres, and Virden almost 50 mm.
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Medora, Hartney and Deloraine got 15 mm, but some areas missed out entirely, such as Souris, which got almost nothing. Just seven mm filled the glass at the monitoring station in Boissevain.
A tornado touched down in a field near Altona, part of the same weather system that wrought destruction on parts of Minnesota over the weekend, but no damage was reported.
Eugene Fraser, who with his two sons farms 4,500 acres near Tilston, had to haul water this spring for 150 of his 300 head herd from one of seven municipal wells in the area.
He has since turned out most of cattle, and most of his pasture watering holes are sufficient now, except for one.
Faced with drought and a shortage of feed, Brian Sterling, who also ranches near Tilston, is planning to sell a third of his 300 cows this spring.
Sterling said that he’d seen dry weather before, but the slow pace of pasture regrowth in the area due to the cool weather was unprecedented. It would take 80 to 100 mm of rain to bring things back to normal for the short term, he added.
“Even if we get rain now, we won’t have grass for another two weeks. That gets us well into June, which is really late,” he said. “You’re not too far then from the point of no return. After June 20, your growth potential is really limited.”
