‘Million dollar rain’: Sask. farmers wait for moisture

With rain in the forecast for much of Saskatchewan this weekend, lots of fingers are crossed that Mother Nature will pull through.

Steve Donald is one of them.

He farms near Moosomin and said, at this time of year, this is the moisture that counts.

“This is what they call, ‘the million dollar rain,'” he told 980 CJME while spraying a neighbour’s crop on Friday.

“(My neighbour) claims that every year when I spray for him, we get a couple inches of rain, so I’m just purposely doing it and hoping for that.”

Luckily for Donald, Environment Canada’s calling for organized rain and thundershowers in the southeast through Monday, according to meteorologist Terri Lang.

Lang said upwards of 40 millimetres, or roughly an inch and a half, is expected.

“Once the sun goes down, (the clouds) kind of form into a big area of more continuous rain, so that’s what looks like is going to happen over the southeast corner of the province this weekend,” she explained.

Lang noted the most moisture in the southern part of the province will come by way of scattered thundershowers, while central Saskatchewan can expect lighter, “hit and miss” showers.

“Sometimes you get it and your neighbour doesn’t — that type of thing,” she clarified.

Being in the region that’s likely to get the best drink from Mother Nature, Donald says he’ll be holding Environment Canada to its forecast.

He noted his crops still have some moisture below the soil, but it’s depleting quick and a good two inches of rain would put his growing season on a healthy track.

“We got some rain last week and it was about four tenths, and you would have never known in a couple hours that that’s what we had — that’s how dry we are, (the moisture) just disappeared,” he explained.

Lang said this is the “driest spring coming into summer on record” for most of southern Saskatchewan, with Saskatoon and Moose Jaw being the driest.