Dreaming Of Spring
Enough, already, of this winter that won’t end
Dust storms, grass fires, bicycles meandering down bare paths, shorts and Tshirts, and golf — those are some of the enduring images of March in Saskatchewan.
At least, they were last year.
Those ghosts of spring past are a haunting reminder that March can indeed come in more lamb-like, just not this season.
In a year when it feels like winter is set on permanent rewind, the Leader-Post decided to dig into the archives and reflect back on the dying days of Marches past to see how they stack up against this miserable month of record snowfall, endless highway closures, and rising flood projections (should warmer weather ever arrive).
Admit it. Somehow you knew Mother Nature would even the score after one of the mildest winters on record in 2011-12. On an unseasonably warm St. Patrick’s Day, some motorcycle enthusiasts took to the road. Remember March 22, 2012, the high in Regina was 14.7 — on the plus side.
By mid-March last year, Environment Canada’s weather guru Dave Phillips had proclaimed the winter that was the second warmest on record for this province. “There are two ways to describe this winter — warm and dry,” he said.
Perhaps no one knew that better than those in the province’s southwest. In mid-March, the Maple Creek area was hit by grass fires fanned by high winds. “There are tinder-dry conditions in the whole area at the moment,” Saskatchewan Fire Commissioner Duane McKay told the Leader-Post back then.
What a difference a year makes. On St. Patrick’s Day 2013, the weather monitoring station at SIAST recorded a record amount of snow on the ground at 194.6 cm or just over 6 1/2 feet. In March 2012, the same station recorded no snowfall after March 7 and a row of zeros for snow on the ground from March 14 onward.
Looking back five years ago, the Saskatchewan Watershed Authority was reporting that the southern half of the province was dry and desperate for moisture. The worry for many farmers was drought, not floods.
Agriculture columnist Kevin Hursh wrote in midMarch 2008: “Across a big chunk of southern Saskatchewan, the ground is bare and there’s nary a puddle to be seen.”
It was similar story in March 2003, which followed a winter of record-breaking cold that forced the closure of Mission Ridge ski hill an unprecedented four times that season. On March 1 that year, diehard anglers braced themselves against a day that felt like -37 with the wind chill to compete in Regina Beach’s annual fishing contest.
But by mid-March 10 years ago, the melt had begun. Asquith farmer Don Goosen told the StarPhoenix he was worried about ground moisture. “It’s more snow than we’ve had the last two or three years, but it’s not a big amount. Maybe we had eight, nine inches (20 to 22 cm) all told,” he said.
Twenty-five years ago, the front page of the Leader-Post on March 24, 1988 showed then-mayor Larry Schneider, clad in a sweater, standing on the brown, bare grass in front of City Hall after what was described as an extremely dry winter.
Residents in Limerick, a village near Assiniboia in south-central Saskatchewan, were told that February to start cutting back on water because of concerns the area reservoir could be empty by that June.
“Our major snowfall was in January and that was maybe an inch,” the village administrator said at the time.
Go back 50 years ago and farmers were also praying for snow or rain after what was described as “the rather unusual winter (that) saw above-normal temperatures and below-average snowfall.”
A story about the first day of spring that year was accompanied by a photo of a little boy in mud-covered boots.
“In many of the southern areas of the province, dugouts and livestock watering supplies are depleted and the soil moisture reserve is poor,” read the March 21, 1963, story headlined: “Spring New King.”
The Regina Morning Leader — as the paper was then known — 100 years ago was filled with advertisements for new Easter bonnets. But many women may have still been sporting their winter tuques, as the March 23, 1913 holiday blew in with low of -26.1 and a high that barely broke -14. A week later after what had been a relatively snowfall-free spring, winter returned with a six-centimetre blast.
The promise of April — and warmer temperatures — is coming.
But just remember, poet T.S. Eliot wrote: “April is the cru-ellest month.”