October 28, 2009

Producers in western Canada with crops still in the field are going to be severely challenged over the next week or two to get those crops harvested before winter sets in.

 

"There are a number of weather disturbances lined up that will bring a variety of precipitation events across the Canadian prairies over the next week and a half," said Drew Lerner, with Kansas City-based World Weather Inc. "There may be opportunities for some harvest operations late next week, but even those will be short-lived, unfortunately."

 

Lerner said producers need the weather to be absolutely dry and warm in order to move the remaining harvest along. "The further out we look, the better the weather will get, but that does not do anything for producers who are aggressively trying to forward those [harvest] activities in the near-term."

 

The weather event that is already underway in southern Alberta Tuesday will come in two pieces, Lerner said.

 

The first piece is already covering southern Alberta and will move across southwest Saskatchewan, through Regina and head for the Interlake region of Manitoba, he said.

 

"With it will come a swath of rain that will likely result in amounts of six to 15 millimetres," Lerner said, noting that in the first 24 to 36 hours of this system, rain will fall before it starts changing over to snow.

 

He said the snow will begin in the southeast corner of Alberta beginning late Tuesday or early Wednesday before moving into the southern regions of Saskatchewan. Accumulations of snow could be anywhere from 3 to 10 centimetres, Lerner said.

 

The storm system that will move into Alberta Wednesday night and early Thursday will come straight eastward across the three prairie provinces bringing with it a fairly large snow event.

 

"Between 3 and 10 centimetres of snow will be fairly common across the region from Alberta into central Saskatchewan and into parts of Manitoba," Lerner said.

 

The temperatures were not seen getting extremely cold, but they are forecast to remain below freezing for a few days across the majority of the region, Lerner said.

 

He also cautioned that there is a large storm that is brewing over the extreme western regions of Ontario which could result in near-blizzard conditions over much of Manitoba and the extreme regions of eastern Saskatchewan during the early part of the weekend. The near-blizzard conditions were seen starting late Friday and continuing through much of Saturday.

 

Lerner said the precipitation that will occur across much of western Canada with these weather events will certainly not be conducive to finishing off harvest activities.

 

"Producers in all three provinces will have a bit of snow to deal with by the time these weather events are done by early next week," Lerner said. "The areas that really don't need the precipitation to happen, will be the regions that receive the most."