Prairie road trip proved beneficial for Canadian Senators

Sep 06, 2023

The Senate Ag Committee is back in Ottawa after a road trip to the Canadian prairies last week.

The group spent two days in Saskatchewan, and two in Alberta as part of their work looking at Canada's Soil Health.

The committee has heard numerous presentations in Ottawa and through Zoom but felt it was important to get out and see what's happening.

Alberta Senator Paula Simons says they visited a number of areas in Alberta with different kinds of farming and ranching operations.

Among the stops they visited with Bill Newton at the South Porcupine Ranch where he's running his herd on a 7000-acre ranch with natural prairie
grassland between Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump and Fort McLeod.

Simons says that was interesting as the land has never been plowed or cultivated, and is well managed noting that even in a drought year it was looking fantastic.

The group also visited with Kevin Auch a farmer at Carmangay and Chair of Pulse Canada as well as Rancher Doug Wray at Irricana, the Wray Ranch recently won the national 2023 Environmental Stewardship Award from the Canadian Cattle Association.

They also spent time at Olds College learning about some of the new technology in the ag sector and its benefits.

To hear Glenda-Lee's conversation with Senator Paula Simons click on the link below.

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.