Planting will likely be delayed this spring.

Dale Mohler, Agricultural Meteorologist with AccuWeather, is forecasting a cooler- and wetter-than-normal spring in western Canada.

"It looks we're going to persist in this colder-than-normal pattern through most of the spring," he explains. "The primary driver behind this is the circulation in the Pacific Ocean. We have a lot of cold water in the north and we also have La Nina going on down near the equator. Those two combined mean that there's choppiness in the West, and it looks like it's going to keep us on the colder side of the storm track for most of the spring."

He says the cool temperatures, along with the high soil moisture levels, will prevent growers from getting onto their fields.

"Last year it was the wetness as much as anything that delayed things. This year it may be the coolness, although there will again be some wetness issues as there's fairly good snowback in some places, and if it's cool, it's going to take while for that to melt off," he says.

He says in this particular pattern the weather will be fairly uniform from Alberta to Manitoba.

"If there is an area that's likely to stay the chilliest the longest, it's probably back near the foothills of the Rockies, maybe western Saskatchewan, those areas may take the longest to get established. It may warm up sooner as you move east, especially in Manitoba," says Mohler.

~ Wednesday, March 9, 2011 ~