Rainfall levels track above normal

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This article was published 15/08/2024 (387 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Rainfall levels for most of Westman continue to be above average this growing season, according to Manitoba Agriculture’s latest crop report.

Of the 36 communities or monitoring stations tracked in the report between May 1 and Aug. 11, just four have received less rain than normal.

Mountainside had seven per cent less rain than normal while Boissevain, Oakburn and St. Lazare were one per cent below normal.

Another community, Kola, is reported to have received a typical amount of rain while the rest of the stations had above-normal rain to varying degrees.

The wettest spot in Westman is said to be the Manitoba Beef and Forage Initiatives’ Brookdale Farm site just north of Brandon at the corner of Highway 10 and Provincial Road 353.

The crop report said that the 345 millimetres of rain it received is 55 per cent above normal.

The second-wettest location in Westman is Shilo, which received 343 mm of rain — 54 per cent above normal.

Carberry is third on the list, having received 318 mm of rain. That represents 43 per cent more rainfall than normal.

The only other community that received more than 300 mm of rain was Wawanesa, which had 307 mm since May 1. That’s 38 per cent above normal.

While precipitation has largely been above normal for Westman, temperatures have trended slightly below normal.

The crop report lists the number of growing degree days, a measurement of how much heat has been accumulated by plants to help them grow.

Just six monitoring stations saw normal or above-normal growing degree days this season: Brookdale Farm, Carberry, Ingelow, Minnedosa, Shilo and Wawanesa.

The community with the lowest number of growing degree days was Oakburn, which received 13 per cent fewer than normal.

Some agricultural producers in the province struggled to get their crops planted on time due to heavy rainfall early in the year, said Jill Verwey, president of Keystone Agricultural Producers.

She said that some parts of the province, like the Interlake and around Dauphin, were hit harder than others.

“There certainly were some producers that were affected where they didn’t get anything in or half of their crop didn’t get seeded,” said Verwey, whose own farms are in the Portage la Prairie area.

“If you were speaking to the province overall, the statistics really weren’t alarming. But if you happen to be in that area where it was hit with a lot of moisture, then it could have had a negative impact.”

Harvesting for spring crops is only just starting, she said, and yields appear positive so far, though it is still early in the process.

In southwestern Manitoba, she said there wasn’t as much moisture when the crops were filling in. Combined with the wet spring, she said that could potentially mean lower quality yields or lower protein in cereal crops. However, that won’t be determined for a few weeks yet.

Overall, Verwey said the additional moisture helped build up water levels in the soil after a dry 2023.

While some cereal crops will have benefited from that, she said it was also a boon for dugouts that cattle drink from as well as pasture and hay land.

“I think most producers are very positive going into the harvest this fall,” she said. “I think that the only crop where we can see some significant stress is probably the canola fields, where they definitely have taken a hit with this additional moisture.”

The seasonal outlook for September currently forecasts warmer and drier than average weather in southwestern Manitoba, said Environment and Climate Change Canada meteorologist Terri Lang.

However, she cautioned that seasonal outlooks are generally educated guesses made by meteorologists.

“Our skill at forecasting precipitation trends in the long range is not great,” Lang said. “We’re a lot better with temperatures, even though we didn’t do very well this spring.”

She said Environment Canada’s records for the past 90 days show that much of southern Manitoba as well as the Interlake have received slightly above average rain.

“That does support that it was a wet, wet spring and then it got dry,” she said.

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