Provincial crops average for 2017

Jan 02, 2018

2017 started out with lots of moisture and early spring, which allowed some producers the opportunity to get out and wrap up the harvest from last year.

Shannon Friesen is the Acting Crop Management Specialist with Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Agriculture.

She says as we moved through the growing season the tap seemed to shut off but despite that most areas took off a pretty decent crop:

"Quality, for the most part, some of the best we have seen in a very long time," she said. "When we talk about yields for the most part provincially again on average."

She notes producers especially in the south were pleased with this year’s crop given the lack of rain through the growing season:

"Canola provincially we were only at about 34 bushels per acre," she said. "The ten-year average is 31, but when we keep in mind what we got in the south which was anywhere between 25 to 29 bushels per acre on average. That was well exceeded in the north, with close to 40 bushels. When we move to hard red spring wheat, the provincial average was about 43 bushels, in the southwest, we did see a low of about 33 bushels."

Source : Discoverestevan

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.