A warmer, drier winter means farmers can start seeding earlier this year, but a prominent Alberta water expert warns there could be a longer-term downside.
There is a smaller than usual snowpack in the Rocky Mountains and it has already started melting, says Bob Sandford, a fellow of the Biogeoscience Institute at the University of Calgary who chairs the United Nations “Water for Life” initiative.
“So that snowpack will probably lead to peak run off earlier than usual, which could lead to a much longer, drier summer if precipitation doesn’t follow,” he said.
Cam Schmitt says the soil is near perfect on his fields south of Lethbridge, near the U.S. border — good enough to be firing up his seeder this week.
“We’re having a good start,” he said.
But Schmitt worries that could change down the road.
“We get our forecasts out of Great Falls, Montana a lot. And when they’re at 65 degrees in January and February it kind of almost makes me think that we could have a fairly dry one coming,” he said.
A spokesman for the local irrigation district says while the smaller snowpack has officials being cautious, the reservoirs are quite full from last year.
“However the concern will be, if we have a long, hot, dry summer, and use of a lot of irrigation water, and pull the reservoirs way down, and then go into another winter where the snow is really below normal, then, for 2016 we will be concerned,” he said.
Torrie said this year the district has decided to impose very minor irrigation rationing.
