Producers in southern Ontario and throughout eastern Canada are likely to experience a cool and wet spring followed by a summer with lower than normal temperatures, as they push through to harvest.
Temperature and all things weather however, are a matter of perception. Keeping in mind a dry spring for Ontario is 8 to 12 inches of rain, amounts that would have producers in the Palliser Triangle thanking their lucky stars for such moisture. Albeit, contrast and comparison to other growing areas is fairly irrelevant when you’re main goal is to produce the best crop you can for your growing area.
Scott Kehler, chief scientist and co-founder of Weatherlogics, says with it being cooler than usual, that also typically indicates a higher chance of precipitation through the growing season as well.
“My forecast is for it to be a cooler, late spring-summer period. And typically when you get that in the summer, it’s usually associated with wetter weather. So based on that, my inclination is to think that it would be another cooler and wetter summer for Southern Ontario. So not too dissimilar from what folks they would have seen last year,” he says.
Through to Quebec, Kehler states there isn’t much variance, however as we move farther east, out to the maritimes, the temperature should level back out to more as-expected seasonal temperatures.
At any rate, the risk of frost is significantly low whether you’re in Ontario or the maritimes, says Kehler, with the odds being very low that producers in that region will experience any extremes that would cause a frost moving forward.
Although cool temperatures are set to linger throughout the upcoming months, Kehler says that if producers can hang tight for another week to 10 days, they should start to see warmer days than what has been experienced so far this spring.
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