HOT, DRY & DISASTROUS
Western Canada’s drought has crops rotting, salmon dying, fires flaring
Record-breaking temperatures and extremely low rainfalls across Western Canada are causing chaos for farmers and firefighters this summer as they grapple with the worst drought in more than a decade.
The widespread hot and dry conditions in British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan have led to a jump in wildfires, tight water restrictions, and pressure on farmers as crops remain stunted and the cost of hay skyrockets.
While some rain sprinkled the largely bone-dry Prairies this week, it may be too little, too late for the western provinces to recover fully before the summer ends.
Plans to help them cope have already been initiated. Thursday, Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said Ottawa would grant tax deferrals to livestock producers in regions affected by drought.
On the same day, with smoke billowing from a hillside behind him, Prime Minister Stephen Harper vowed to take a hard look at new ways to fight devastating wildfires like the one raging near West Kelowna, B.C.
In Alberta, several counties have declared states of agricultural emergency. In Saskatchewan, crop insurance rules are being loosened to help anxious farmers. In British Columbia, water restrictions have been imposed, while “drought shaming” grows on social media.
And it’s prompting many people to ask just what’s going on.
“Is it climate change? I don’t know. It may just be a fluke, it may just be something coincidental, it’s hard to say,” says David Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada.
He says although many people have associated the lack of rain in the region with El Niño — which happens when warm water in the Pacific Ocean interacts with the atmosphere — it may be connected to the “Pacific Blob,” a mass of warm water that originated in the Gulf of Alaska and moved down the coast to British Columbia.
“(It) could have contributed to weather blocking, which prevents normal processing of precipitation events, over the western provinces,” Phillips says.
“What we’re seeing now is conditions go from one extreme to the other,” Phillips says. “Some parts of the Prairies last year were the wettest on record. This year, we’ve seen the opposite.”
He calls it “weather whiplash.”
“That seems to be a common thing that we’re seeing around the world, where normal doesn’t exist anymore.”
The effects of this year’s extremely dry conditions are widespread.
FARMING
About 60 per cent of the agricultural land in the prairie region has received low or record low precipitation, says agro-climate specialist Trevor Hadwen. That has affected about 27,000 farmers and six million cattle in the very dry regions of Alberta and Saskatchewan.
“We had just completed our first hay cut, which was probably a little less than half what we normally get. And the second cut in the pasture was basically dying,” says Orville Schmidt, who farms in Leduc, southeast of Edmonton.
“I’m 60 years old. In those 60 years, I can only remember two or three summers like this where we’ve had no rain in May, June and July.”
Edmonton and its surrounding areas have been the driest in Alberta. The most recent crop reports pegged sub-soil moisture levels in the area as 98 per cent poor to fair. Only 12 to 18 per cent of spring wheat, barley, canola and dry peas were in good to excellent condition.
Several Alberta counties have declared states of agricultural disasters — although this does not guarantee there will be an immediate flow of provincial or federal dollars to farmers, they are hoping a financial relief fund will be set up.
Bill Gehl, who farms near Tregarva, north of Regina, said subsoil moisture left over from two wet years helped insulate his crops against the worst of the drought.
“We were coming off of three years, at least, of excess moisture, so really the conditions were quite good,” he says. “But then, that was followed up by a fairly extended period of no moisture whatsoever.”
In B.C.’s Fraser Valley farmers are doubly fraught by hot, dry conditions — crops ripening so fast they can’t be harvested and unirrigated fields burned brown by unrelenting sun. Farmers have left tonnes of perfect berries, corn, peas and beans to rot because they are all ripening at the same time, said Tom Baumann, an agriculture professor at the University of the Fraser Valley.
Chilliwack farmer Ian Sparkes left 240,000 ears of ripe corn in the field after his staggered sowings ripened at the same time.
“I just can’t sell it all,” said Sparkes, who has about two dozen farm stands.
Livestock producers have been hardest hit, with poor pasture conditions leading to extremely low hay yields. In its weekly crop report, Saskatchewan’s agriculture ministry said yields on dry land are “well below” the five-year average.
Many farmers facing feeding challenges are being forced to make difficult decisions. There are two options left for cattle producers: buy more feed at double the normal cost, or begin selling off cattle.
“Guys are just going to be watching their pennies right now,” says Norm Hall, president of the Agriculture Producers Association of Saskatchewan.
The conditions have forced Saskatchewan to OK grazing in 90,000 acres of its wildlife development land. It has also loosened crop insurance rules to let producers use droughtstressed crops for grazing and forage.
Schmidt says the drought has increased demand for hay and grain feed across the West.
“I think it has a lot to do with the fact that it’s not just us (in Alberta),” he says. “We’ve had a lot of people we used to sell hay to in British Columbia desperate for hay. Their drought is just as bad as ours.”
While areas of Alberta and Saskatchewan saw some muchneeded rain this week, the situation is not improving in B.C.
The southwest portion of the province is experiencing a Level 4 drought — the most extreme rating — and could soon be joined by the South Thompson, Okanagan and Similkameen.
“In British Coumbia, about 35 per cent of the agricultural landscape is considered to be receiving very low to record low precipitation,” Hadwen said. “That hasn’t improved. It’s only got worse in the last couple of weeks.”
WILDFIRES
Forests in B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan are burning at rates well above normal, prompting governments to impose fire bans, driving thousands of people from their homes, and requiring firefighters to be brought in from the eastern provinces, the U.S., Mexico, New Zealand and Australia.
Early in July, Saskatchewan had to call in the army: More than 1,000 military personnel were deployed to fight the wildfires. This week, provincial officials said the amount of land that has burned in Saskatchewan this year was about 10 times what is normal.
In B.C., the blazes have blown through the provincial government’s $63-million firefighting budget, a figure that Premier Christy Clark now admits could hit $400 million by summer’s end. About 240 fires are burning after dozens more flared up when lightning storms passed through the interior and Okanagan this past week.
In Alberta, there have been more than 1,400 fires — double the number for the entire 2014 wildfire season.
WATER FLOWS
With most of the mountain snowpack long ago melted and little rain since May, water flows in rivers in B.C. are trending to record low flow and higher water temperatures, which leads to high mortality in spawning salmon.
A July 4 fishing ban for southern Vancouver Island streams was this week expanded to most rivers in drought-stricken areas.
“The snow we did have melted off earlier than normal right across the province, upwards of a month ahead of what is normal,” Dave Campbell, spokesman for the Rivers Forecast Centre. “It has also been warmer and drier than normal for almost three months so we are now seeing extreme low flows (in southwestern B.C.).”
Some flows are the lowest recorded since measurements began 80 to 100 years ago, says Campbell.
In Sechelt, on the Sunshine Coast north of Vancouver, low water levels are being blamed for the loss of at least 130 jobs. This week, the Howe Sound Pulp & Paper Mill announced it would close its paper production operations because of dropping water levels in Lake Seven.
RESTRICTIONS
While several communities in Alberta and Saskatchewan have asked residents to conserve water, the situation is much more dire on the West Coast.
Communities in Vancouver and on Vancouver Island have implemented widespread restrictions on water use.
Metro Vancouver has banned outdoor sprinkling, washing cars and filling swimming pools for the first time in more than a decade to preserve rapidly dwindling water supplies in the region’s three reservoirs. That’s less than 70 per cent of normal for this time of year, said Metro chairman Greg Moore.
Environment Canada metrologist Lisa Coldwells said 16.6 millimetres of rain fell on the South Coast during May, June and July, compared to an average of 154.5 millimetres.
A little relief came Friday, as it rained in Vancouver and along the coast, but it was only expected to be a few millimetres — not enough to make a difference.