Saskatchewan Agriculture reports isolated showers over the past week brought welcome moisture but the intensity of the storms resulted in some flooding and some crops being damaged by hail.Saskatchewan Agriculture released its weekly crop report Thursday for the period from June 10th to 16th.Matt Struthers, a Provincial Cereal Crop Specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture says the province finally did receive some pretty substantial rainfall over the past week.
Quote-Matt Struthers-Saskatchewan Agriculture:
I'm sure some producers are shaking their heads.A lot of that rain came down in a pretty short amount of time so it did result in a little bit of flooding for those involved and also brought with it a bit of hail but I know many producers were happy to see it rain finally.The rain was spread across the western half of the province and up into the north.The east central and southeast kind of missed out on those rains.
They had more spotty rains but overall, since it was so dry and these rains were fairly localised, it did very little to raise the provincial topsoil moisture levels.It's very been very dry in many parts of the province, especially the up into the northern regions, the northwest and the northeast, typically two areas that seem to have that moisture.They started off this year quite behind where they normally are and, when you look down in the southwest, things are continuing to dry down with the heat and with the wind and the absence of rain so hopefully the rain they are calling for in the forecast is true.But, even with that, crop development is still progressing largely at the normal stages for many crop types across all regions.Overall conditions are holding strong ranging from good to fair with some of the poorer crops being seen in the more dry regions.
Struthers says the most severe damage we saw this past week was from hail, especially evident in the fall seeded crops.He says some of those crops are heading out already and they are unlikely to recover.
Source : Farmscape.ca