Saskatchewan has been suffering a drought for the past two years — and the area around Regina is currently classified as experiencing a “moderate drought” by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.
Rancher Levi Hull is concerned with the lack of snow.
He grows his own crops to feed his livestock on his ranch near Willobrook, Sask. But not enough snow means that there won’t be enough water in the spring for the crops or the livestock. That makes it harder to take care of his 3,300 cows.
‘We’re going to have to worry about cows having adequate water sources out in these pastures and whether that plant is going to have an adequate amount of moisture to fully succeed in its life” he said.
There are just a few centimetres of snow covering the Parklands, a fraction of what it has been in the past at this time of year.
Environment Canada Senior Climatologist David Phillips said that the lack of precipitation is unprecedented.
“We’ve certainly never — since the 1880s, when observations began [in the prairies] — have had two back-to-back drier years than 2017 and 2018” he said.
Phillips says that Saskatchewan needs a “sopping wet kind of Pacific system that buries the province and gives you some kind of moisture.”
He says that he hopes the blizzard forecast for this weekend provides relief to the farmers.
Hull says that his farm will be alright this season but that he worries that the drought will continue.
“Anyone can handle one, two years of drought,” he says. “But it’s three, four, five years that [can] really get a guy.”
