CN Rail back on track following extreme cold conditions

Feb 20, 2024

CN Rail has gotten through the cold snap that caused problems for them near the end of January and is seeing positive results in February.

Vice President of Grain David Przednoweck says that the difference can be seen in how much they were able to ship.

"We've had a couple of good strong weeks of shipments coming out of the very cold conditions that we saw, which everybody wants to forget about in January and hopefully we don't see that again. For grain shipments, weeks 27 and 28, we shipped 576,000 and 571,000 tons of grain and processed products respectively."

"To compare that to the last couple of weeks of January, which were really feeling the full effects of the extreme cold the grain volumes were more like around 475-480,000 tons. You've seen a big jump there. We've got a strong program lined up for next week here. I would say that we're pretty much out of the woods at this point and we've got the wind at our back here with warmer weather and we're looking for a strong run here through the balance of February into March."

Car order fulfillment is also up with those numbers reestablishing from the cold weather.

"For grain shipment week 28 for those orders confirmed and planned, we supplied over 90% of those orders either within the want week requested or within one to three days at the end of the want week."

"So the way to think about that, it's a Sunday to Saturday want week, so if you catch it on a Sunday versus a Saturday, it wasn't in the want week requested, it just fell outside. But that's your 90% plus, so we expect those numbers to strengthen here as we are on the tail end of the recovery from the extreme cold."

Przednoweck says that for the extreme cold and the Colorado low that came in during week 27, it's taken the rails some time to get back into form but they're now back on track.

He feels that their network is ready for the spring and summer seasons.

"CN's network velocity, that is the average number of cars, average number of miles per day that a car can travel has fully recovered here after the impacts of the extreme cold and we do expect that to maintain here if we do have good operating conditions through the month. We look forward to seeing what happens as we get into March and into the balance of the crop year."

Source : Pembinavalley online

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.