Reuters / Thursday January 25, 2001 / By Kanina Holmes
WINNIPEG (Reuters) - At a time of year when western Canada's Prairies should be hibernating under a protective blanket of snow, many fields in Alberta lie bare, with record low precipitation and record high temperatures creating uneasiness about the upcoming crop year.
"It's a concern basically because you're starting the season with very little soil moisture reserve," Bruce Burnett, director of weather and crops surveillance at the Canadian Wheat Board, the major marketer for Prairie grain crops, said this week.
"The soil moisture reserve is the bank that helps you get through some rough spots in the growing season if you do have them," he said.
From September to December last year, precipitation in a wide north-south swath through Alberta was less than half of the normal level, according to Environment Canada, the country's weather forecasting service. In some areas, moisture levels were only a quarter of normal levels.
"That's a pretty significant number based on a four-month average," said Dennis Dudley, an Environment Canada meteorologist in Edmonton, Alberta. "We're sitting out here pretty high and dry."
January's weather has also proven exceptionally dry and mild. So far this month, the northern Peace River region received only 0.4 mm (0.02 inches) of precipitation, compared with a normal average of 22 mm (0.8 inches).
In the southern Alberta city of Lethbridge, temperatures did not drop below freezing for the first 12 days of the new year, hovering between 8 degrees Celsius to 12 degrees Celsius (46 Fahrenheit degrees to 54 degrees Fahrenheit).
Many farmers are concerned because this latest dry spell comes on top of two dry years for the southern part of the province. Last summer crops wilted in drought conditions.
A lack of snow cover can lead to more erosion and more soil evaporation, moisture that farmers count on to germinate seeds in the spring.
"As we get into a dryer stretch here, people are starting to rethink the notion that they can continuous crop in the brown soil zone," said Rob Dunn, a cereal and oilseed crop specialist with Alberta's Agriculture Department in Lethbridge.
Another dry year could also mean trouble for livestock producers who need to replenish their reservoirs.
"We need a major, or at least some snow run off just to provide cattle with water on rangeland in southern Alberta. That's a pretty big issue," said Dunn.
Anxiety has been heightened here by recent reports about the rate and potential impact of global warming. Earlier this week, the United Nations warned that the earth's atmosphere is heating up faster than expected and Canadian climatologists say that temperatures across the country in 2000 were above normal for the eighth year in a row.
A report prepared by the International Institute for Sustainable Development in Winnipeg, predicted the effects of global warming would be felt on the prairies within the next three decades in the form of extreme storms and droughts.
Weather experts, crop specialists and farmers all agree it is too early in the season to panic and there is still a good chance that snowstorms and spring rains will bring badly needed moisture, but they are watching the sky closely.
"I would say that it's probably within the normal variability of climate, however with the climate changing and what not, it does ring some bells," Dudley said.:
