Ag Weather Forum

Each year as winter grows old and starts to turn into spring we begin to look at the flood potential for the new spring season. So far this winter, snowfall has been above normal across most of the northern portions of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, to northern Alberta on a pretty consistent basis.

Across the main growing areas, snowfall has been less consistent with the late fall and early winter highly productive before amounts dropped off dramatically during February. March began with a new storm and a solid 10 to 20 centimeters of snow for many areas boosting snow depths to above-normal levels.

With the current snowpack now mostly above normal, and with that snowpack containing higher than average moisture content, the spring flood outlook shows a higher risk of overland flooding than last year, but not anything like what we saw during 2011.

The higher risk will be through the more northern locations of croplands of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. These areas have retained higher soil moisture content from last season and have seen the highest snow totals during the winter.

Of course, there is still time for changes to this forecast since we have several more weeks during which more snow can accumulate. During the major floods of 2011, soil moisture was already very high when soil froze during the fall of 2010 and was followed by above-normal snow and rain through the winter and spring, combined with a rapid meltdown.

While we are not forecasting the same for this spring, we do see evidence that snowfall may be above normal during March into early April, adding to the snowpack. Lower-than-normal temperatures are expected for eastern areas with milder readings for the west during the next month. When the real meltdown starts in a few weeks, we will be better able to determine just how significant this season's flooding may turn out to be.

For now, it appears that residents of the Prairies should prepare for a little more flooding this year than we saw during spring 2012. Hopefully additional snow is not excessive before it starts to melt, and it would be helpful if the meltdown is slow and orderly.

Doug Webster can be reached at doug.webster@telventdtn.com

(ES/)

© Copyright 2013 DTN/The Progressive Farmer. All rights reserved.