Although last week’s spring blizzard is in the rearview for Manitoba, the added moisture from heavy snowfall raises concerns — again — about potential flooding for many of the province’s rural communities.
Rural Municipality of Morris reeve Ralph Groening told Global News that his community is weary of being on flood watch and tired of the extended winter.
Even though Morris only got hit by around 15 cm of snow during the latest storm, Groening said it’s enough to potentially create some unwanted problems.
“It’s not significant (snowfall) but it’s created additional challenges for road conditions,” he said.
“It will, of course, melt at some point and then we’ll be looking again more seriously at what is going to be the prediction for high water. I think we’re OK but we’ll wait and see.
“People are weary of talking about floods. We’re all weary of this extended winter season. We are certainly weary of the additional snow.”
Groening said he feels confident that his municipality will continue to be able to control and minimize overland flooding concerns and is up to the challenge, despite the extra precipitation.
“I think we’re good to go, we want to reassure people: work with us, stay with us, we’re on top of things. Let’s be done with the melt and move on into what should be the next season of 2022.”
That melt, however, may not be coming as soon as most Manitobans hope.
Environment Canada’s Dave Carlson told 680 CJOB’s The Start that spring is nowhere to be found, and that the province should expect colder than normal temperatures and more precipitation this week.
“This time of year, we can get cold weather or we can get really warm weather. It just seems like right now unfortunately we’re stuck in a colder pattern,” Carlson said.
“At this time of year, cold begets cold. The snow we’ve got on the ground – that doesn’t really help the sun make it warmer.”
Carlson said a Colorado Low carrying a lot of moisture is expected on Friday, but it’s too soon to know whether it will come in the form of rain or snow — or both.
The latest snowfall — and the extended time for a spring melt, however, has some Manitoba farmers concerned.
Bill Campbell, president of Keystone Agricultural Producers (KAP) told Global News the window for seeding is a small one.
“On one side, the moisture is appreciated — considering the conditions that we went through last year,” he said.
“But when you look at the other side and look at the calendar, and you start to realize it’s the 18th of April and the countryside is a solid sea of white and our ditches are half full … as we look at this and look at the forecast, our ideal seeding window would be probably 30 days from now — somewhere between the 10th and 15th of May.”
Campbell said there are maybe 60 days before the absolute latest date for farmers to seed their fields, but the current weather conditions mean there’s still going to be a waiting period before producers can get out there.
“We’ve got 10 days of miserable weather yet, we’ve probably got at least 10 days of spring melt to happen before we could maybe get on the fields, so we’re pushing the envelope of that ideal seeding opportunity,” he said.
“It’s drawing some concern of producers … we’re hoping everything will progress normally, but we haven’t seen a lot of normal in this winter of 2022.”