Saskatchewan farmers hoping spring rainfall will make up for lack of snow

Farmers across Saskatchewan are starting to get worried as December nears its end and fields still look brown.

Rob Stone at Stone Farms near Davidson, Saskatchewan, said the ground is currently frozen and any moisture in future snow events will have a hard time infiltrating the soil.

“We will be looking for rainfall in the spring,” Stone said. “We will need to adjust our expectations, marketing plans, and our input regime to try and leave ourselves as open to change as possible and be ready for that time when it does start to rain.”

Stone said his farms last saw adequate moisture levels in 2020.

“We’ve had some recharge from snow over the years, but we have also had less than normal snow but have been in a cycle where we are dry and continue to be dry.”

He said livestock producers are going to be looking for snow to replenish dugout and water storage levels.

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November freeze-up reports from the province’s Water Security Agency said that significant snowfalls are needed to end Saskatchewan’s drought.

“While some areas of the province experienced higher than normal spring runoff events due to an unusually fast spring thaw, the last half of the summer and early fall was drier than normal,” a release from the WSA read.

Unless some areas receive extremely heavy snowfalls in the coming months, moisture levels are expected to remain at drought conditions.

“There is, however, concern of surface water supply issues in the southwest if winter snowfall is below average,” the release read. “In some cases, an above normal snowpack would be required to stave off extremely dry conditions.”

There are currently no areas of the province that are predicted to have above-normal spring runoff levels in 2024.

Saskatchewan’s president of the Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM) Ray Orb said the last few years have been trying.

“If you look around the province you won’t see many areas that had normal precipitation in the summer. That, combined with fairly warm temperatures and a lot of wind… it has put some RM’s in conditions where they are concerned about the spring.”

Orb said farmers and RM’s are keeping an eye on what government programming might be available to assist areas that are lacking moisture.

“We are hoping that we have a better snowpack by spring than we do now but also spring, timely, rains are what we look at to get us through.”