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B.C. farmers using helicopters to help crops

Jun 26, 2023

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The helicopters help blow rainwater off ripening fruit

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

Some B.C. farmers are looking to the skies for help with the fruit crops.

But rather than looking up in the hopes of rain, cherry farmers are employing helicopters to help dry the crops.

Allowing water to sit on the fruit can cause swelling, splitting or breaking the cherry – thereby spoiling it.

Bringing in helicopters can dry an acre of cherries in under five minutes.

“Flying a helicopter just above the treetops produces a downwash of air and turbulence which blows most of the of the rainwater off the leaves and cherries,” the B.C. Cherry Association says. “The turbulence rebounds from the ground providing side wash, blowing the trees dry on both sides.”

Farmers also charter helicopters to help crops in other ways.

In 2022, cherry producers booked helicopters to push warmer air down towards the trees.

But employing the choppers isn’t a decision farmers make without reason.

It can cost a farmer between $1,000 and $1,600 per hour.

“Hiring helicopters is not something we undertake lightly,” Sukhpaul Bal, president of the B.C. Cherry Association (BCCA), told CBC. “They are very expensive, and if there was another way to save our crop, we would.”

Cherries are important to B.C. agriculture.

The province produces 95 per cent of all cherries grown in Canada, the BCCA says. The Okanagan Valley, the Similkameen Valley and Creston Valley are the main cherry-growing areas.

The B.C. cherry industry contributes about $180 million to the province’s economy each year.

And in 2021, Canada exported $78 million of sweet cherries.

Video: Spring 2026 weather outlook for Wisconsin; What an early-arriving El Niño could mean

Northeast Wisconsin is a small corner of the world, but our weather is still affected by what happens across the globe.

That includes in the equatorial Pacific, where changes between El Niño and La Niña play a role in the weather here -- and boy, have there been some abrupt changes as of late.

El Niño and La Niña are the two phases of what is collectively known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO for short. These are the swings back and forth from unusually warm to unusually cold sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean along the equator.

Since this past September, we have been in a weak La Niña, which means water temperatures near the Eastern Pacific equator have been cooler than usual. That's where we're at right now.

Even last fall, the long-term outlook suggested a return to neutral conditions by spring and potentially El Niño conditions by summer.

But there are some signs this may be happening faster than usual, which could accelerate the onset of El Niño.

Over the last few weeks, unusually strong bursts of westerly winds farther west in the Pacific -- where sea surface temperatures are warmer than average -- have been observed. There is a chance that this could accelerate the warming of those eastern Pacific waters and potentially push us into El Niño sooner than usual.

If we do enter El Nino by spring -- which we'll define as the period of March, April and May -- there are some long-term correlations with our weather here in Northeast Wisconsin.

Looking at a map of anomalously warm weather, most of the upper Great Lakes doesn't show a strong correlation, but in general, the northern tiers of the United States do tend to lean to that direction.

The stronger correlation is with precipitation. El Niño conditions in spring have historically come with a higher risk of very dry weather over that time frame, so this will definitely be a transition we'll have to watch closely as we move out of winter.