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Seeding Continues As Farmers Work Around The Moisture

Seeding is well underway in Western Manitoba.

Intermittent rainfall has delayed some seeding but for the most part operations are underway across the region.

Ron Krahn farms in the Rivers area and he’s about a quarter done his seeding. “We started last Monday and were able to seed all of last week. We thought we’d run out of dry fields by the end of last week, but the sun and winds made a big difference. He adds things look pretty good.”

“Our fields are plenty wet and we have lots of sub soil moisture from last year. We were wet last spring so many of the low spots that didn’t get seeded last year they didn’t have any crop to hold moisture so the lows spots this year are quite wet.”

Ron Krahn is pleased to be on his fields well before the May long weekend. Last year he said they did some seeding by the long weekend but put the bulk of their crop in after the long week in May.

“This feels earlier than last year but when you look at the long-term averages it’s definitely on the later side but it’s not too concerning.”

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

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.