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Prairies should see some rain in late March and early April

We should see some improvement in the weather as we get into the second half of Spring.

Drew Lerner, the senior agri-meteorologist with World Weather Inc says in the meantime we're going to continue to deal with the same below-normal precipitation bias that's been with us all winter long.

"We've had a very warm winter for the most part, except for that brief period in January. All of this is due to a strong high-pressure ridge that has been present over the western part of the prairies that is not likely to go away, at least not full-time. We do think that there will be some weakness that will develop in the ridge as we get into March and perhaps early April and that's when our best chances for rain will begin to develop. "

He says while it will help with spring seeding it's not going to be enough precipitation to seriously change the drought situation in Alberta and Saskatchewan where we're still going to need larger volumes of moisture.

The eastern part of the Prairies -  in particular Manitoba and southeastern Saskatchewan - will have a better chance for larger storm systems to evolve in late March and early April.

Stats show that southwestern Manitoba and northern Alberta have been very dry this winter,  close to record dry for the season,  but they did see some moisture in October and November.

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