Alberta’s drought shaping up to be ‘worse than we saw in the 1920s, 1930s’

May 31, 2024

Lentils only like water twice, explained southern Alberta farmer Lynn Jacobson. “When you plant them and when you boil them.” The earthy pulse may not be massively popular but they’re an attractive crop for farmers facing a drought.

“But they all take a certain amount of water and if you don’t have any water, no matter what your plan is, you’re really going to suffer,” said Jacobson.

For months, Albertans have been worrying about what the unusually dry winter with low levels of snowfall and a summer forecast of light rain. Would it mean dying lawns and wilted flowers? An agriculture disaster? A bad wildfire season?

The past few years have been dry, but it’s been almost 25 years since Alberta has been this dry. Some counties have announced states of agricultural emergency. During the last major drought, in 2001–2002, net farm income was zero. It cost the Canadian economy $5.3 billion and 41,000 people lost their jobs across the country.

In April, Alberta got rain. In fact, the rainfall was above normal for that time of year in much of the province — with the exceptions of central and northwestern Alberta — according to an analysis of drought conditions from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

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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.