Commodity News Service – Crops on the Western Canadian Prairies could be seeing more soggy conditions in the next six to 10 days, according to a noted U.S. weather watcher.
“Saskatchewan and Manitoba will probably have a net drying bias for this week,” said Drew Lerner of World Weather Inc. in Kansas City on July 25. “It doesn’t mean it won’t rain, just that it won’t be very much.”
However, after this, he says, the outlook becomes grimmer.
“Next week I’m concerned we’re going to go back into some more rainy weather. We’ll have greater amounts of precipitation (and possibly hail) occurring across the Prairies and it might be a little stormy,” he said.
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At this point he doesn’t see any serious downpours occurring during that six-to-10 day period, but wouldn’t rule it out either.
“The dynamics in the atmosphere are still pretty impressive. If we can get the ridge in the States to build up a little bit more with the cool air that’s going to be over Alberta. The stage is set,” said Lerner.
August isn’t likely to see any particularly-long stretches of hot, dry weather on the Prairies either.
“I’m not too gung-ho about any kind of serious drying trend across the region. Certainly not, through the middle of August,” he said.
Lerner says later crops like canola may do better than some of the earlier-season varieties, such as lentils, in September when favourable weather might return.
