From floods to drought fears

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/01/2012 (5028 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba has gone from one of the worst floods on record to what some fear could be a drought for this summer.

The province already says moderate drought conditions prevail in eastern Manitoba and in southern Manitoba, including the Westman and Interlake regions, with some areas not seeing much rainfall since late June.

Making the situation worse is little snow covers much of southern Manitoba due to unseasonably mild weather that continues today in Winnipeg. The thermometer is forecast to hit a high of 3 C with rain showers expected this afternoon.

Conditions in Manitoba are mirrored across the country, with snowfall amounts in many places also well below normal.

“We are the second-coldest country in the world and the snowiest country in the world, but what we’ve really seen is a total lack of winter everywhere,” said David Phillips, Environment Canada’s senior climatologist.

“It’s been like a missing-in-action winter and we’re seeing that both in Canada and the United States,” he said.

Heading into the last two months of winter, flood forecasters are cautiously downgrading the risk of flooding on both sides of the 49th parallel despite many Prairie rivers still running high, including the Waterhen River into Lake Manitoba, which is still above flood stage.

“The caveat is we need to avoid a couple of big blizzards and ice storms in the spring and hopefully not get heavy rain on top of frozen ground,” U.S. National Weather Service meteorologist Gregory Gust said Tuesday at a Red River Basin Commission conference in Winnipeg. “With not too bad of a winter and some grace in regard to no heavy rain in the spring we could skate through the spring pretty well.”

Manitoba will release its first spring flood forecast next month.

Despite a relatively balmy winter so far, Environment Canada calls for colder, below-normal weather for the next two months. That’s due to what’s called the Arctic oscillation.

A stronger Arctic oscillation this winter has kept colder temperatures circulating in the polar region longer, allowing for warmer temperatures to creep northwards. That pattern is anticipated to weaken in February and March, but it’s not expected to bring that much more snow.

“As the Arctic cools and some of that Arctic air starts to finally get down here, we get a little bit more precipitation and it starts to look like winter,” Gust said. “But clearly, we’ve had a very relieving break this fall and early winter.”

If conditions persist, there could be little snow to replenish fields that are still dry from last autumn.

“I think we all realize that we did have below-average precipitation starting in June going forward,” provincial crop specialist Pam de Rocquigny said. “So we are definitely, quite opposite of last year.”

De Rocquigny said while it’s too early to predict a drought, much of the land hit by excess moisture last year has dried out.

“If we do get any significant snowfall, the ability of the soil to absorb some of that moisture will be definitely greater than it was a year ago,” she said.

The potential for a drought in Manitoba also hasn’t escaped the attention of Manitoba Hydro and the Canadian Wheat Board.

“If we were to go into a longer term of dryness in the spring or early summer that would effect agriculture crops and their eventual output,” said Bruce Bennett, the wheat board’s weather and markets analyst.

Areas most susceptible to dry conditions include east and south central Manitoba, including the Red River Valley, he said. Most areas in the Assiniboine River basin have also received well below average precipitation. Parts of western Saskatchewan and Alberta are also dry.

“There is a fairly large expanse of the Prairies that does need this winter moisture to start to pick up,” Bennett added. “We’re going to need that or by spring we are going to be very much looking at this dryness and being worried not about excess moisture, but how much moisture we have around.”

Manitoba Hydro spokesman Glenn Schneider said the Crown utility is following the amount of snowfall on the ground, but for a different reason. It needs a steady flow of water for hydroelectric production from its dams.

“It has certainly been dry, below normal precipitation for the past several months, and so it is a concern to us going forward,” he said.

However, Schneider said spring rainfall influences generating stability more than runoff from the snowmelt.

 

— with files from Postmedia News

bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca

 

Flood claims

2011 Flood Disaster Financial Assistance (DFA) Program Claim Status (As of Jan. 20, 2012)

 

To date, $162,589,957 has been paid under the DFA program.

A total of 4,085 private claims have been received and $36,230,279 has been paid.

a) 640 of the private claims are First Nations.

b) 3,445 of the private claims are non-First Nations.

A total of 182 public claims have been received and $76,057,182 has been paid.

a) 30 of the public claims are First Nations and $12,451,111 has been paid.

b) 152 of the public claims are non-First Nations and $63,606,071 has been paid.

A total of 15 provincial departmental claims have been received and $50,302,496 has been paid.

 

Building and Recovery Action Plan

 

Lake Manitoba Financial Assistance

4,831 claims $17.07 million

 

Hoop and Holler Compensation

634 claims

$3.68 million

 

Agrirecovery

12,638 claims

$114.51 million

 

Lake Manitoba Producer

Assistance

754 claims

$14.40 million

 

Excess Moisture

Stimulus Program

95 claims

$1.66 million