Crop damage from intense rains across Manitoba still being assessed

Manitoba Agriculture reports damage from intense rain earlier this week will be assessed over the next few days.

Dennis Lange, provincial pulse and soybean specialist with Manitoba agriculture and editor of the provincial crop report, says isolated thunderstorms brought hail, strong winds, intense rain, and possible tornadoes to most of the province over the past seven days.

Monday afternoon, or late Monday evening there was a major weather system that moved through the southwest and northwest areas. From June 29th at 6am to June 30th, a period covering 31 hours, storms brought some excessive rain to the southwest in the Boissevain area as well as the northwest regions in St. Rose and Fork River area. Some very strong winds, 80 kilometers an hour and a significant amount of rainfall, upwards of 40, 50, and even higher millimeters of rainfall in that short time period.

Overall, we have seen some good progress but I think in some of these areas that did receive that excess moisture, we’ll have to wait a few days to see what kind of response the crop is going to have. A lot of it will depend on which crop it is and also a lot will depend on how quickly the water drains off in some of those areas that got highly affected by that excessive rainfall. For example, areas in the northwest have accumulated more than 150 percent of their normal precipitation while areas in the southern Interlake near Stonewall have accumulated almost 250 percent of their normal precipitation.

Up until this last rainfall, parts of the southwest around Killarney and areas in the eastern region are under 80 percent of the 30-year average precipitation for this season. That may change a little bit in next week’s report.

~ Dennis Lange, Manitoba Agriculture

Lange says crops do look good, although areas with excessive moisture continue to show uneven growth and nutrient stress symptoms. He says the excess moisture has really put stress on some of the crops, but the biggest thing right now is for the water to drain away and to see what kind of crop we have left.