Saskatchewan ‘bone dry’ as warmth and wind erase soil moisture

Like a good martini, Saskatchewan has been dry lately.

Actually, Environment Canada’s senior climatologist, David Phillips, said it has been more like that for a while.

“We’ve seen, in that period from October of 2019 to now, less than 50 per cent of your normal precipitation,” he said on Thursday’s Greg Morgan Morning Show.

It has been unseasonably warm. It has been windy.

Phillips said those weather patterns caused soil moisture to be sucked up.

“It’s almost as if nature has forgotten how to precipitate in that area,” he said.

He singled out the southeast as being pretty dry.

It could be worse. Phillips pointed to Manitoba.

In November, Saskatchewan had a big snowstorm that hit many areas hard, especially Saskatoon and Swift Current. It caused the municipal elections in those cities to be delayed.

Phillips said at the time, people may have been complaining about the storm, but looking back at it now, it turned out to be not the million-dollar precipitation but somewhat of a saving grace.

Since then, not much of anything has fallen. Fire bans already have been put in place in areas of the province.

“It has been bone dry,” said Phillips.

The lack of precipitation trend has carried over into the first week of April. That could change, slightly, soon. Phillips is forecasting 12 millimetres — or nearly half an inch — of rain to fall on parts of Saskatchewan this weekend and into early next week.

“It’s not the saviour, but hey, it’s going to be welcomed,” he said.

“What you really want is a system that comes in and stalls and gives you that kind of not drenching, drenching rain but a slow, percolating kind of precipitation,” Phillips explained.

There is hope from now until July for the moisture to come back. Phillips said Saskatchewan gets more than half of its yearly precipitation over these next four months.

“If you’re going to get it, this is the time of the year that you most likely will get it,” he said.