Floods

[ProFarmer]

my last comment is for fjilp

[jamesb]

When the sloughs are full any rain or snow melt will run water into Manitoba. This is what we are faced with today. The reeve spoken of in the early post is the new reeve one of the amalgamated rms in Manitoba. The rms in Sask close to Manitoba are literally several hundred feet higher than this Manitoba rm. This is the lower souris watershed. She would like us to "close off" our creeks flowing into Manitoba. Doesn't seem to understand if all that if culverts are blocked off all this will do is hold the water back for a short while and then the road will wash out and it all goes at once. The reality is that the undrained fields that run water from their full sloughs are the "uncontrolled drainage". I am told there is new tile drainage works being approved by Sask water and these are looked much more favorably than the open trenches as tile is and can be controlled much more easier. It is galling to have some in Manitoba be resentful of Sask drainage and one only has to go into southern Manitoba and see long term drainage works that have been around since the 1950's. Manitoba has to understand that they are going to get the water regardless of drainage or not as when the soil is at full water holding capacity and the sloughs and entire water shed is full, water is going to run downhill whether drain or not. When Minot ND flooded in 2011 there were people in Minot demanding that Canada keep her water. The water flow meter on the Souris river near Sherwood, ND recorded a volume of water flow "four times" the capacity of the raferty and alameda dams. The water is going to run downhill and no amount of recrimination will stop the flow.

[TOM4CWB]

.... true!

"no amount of recrimination will stop the flow."... or wishful thoughts... or complaints that 'Climate Change' caused it!!!

Strange world... when the world is blamed for future problems... on past innovations...[like fossil fuel advancements in tech and food production] to where we must find a new planet to live on... to turn MotherEarth back to her native state that existed... before humans changed everything!!!

What an advanced state of consciousness we have developed!!!

Happy New year... and may Climate Change make your life sweetness and light!

[grassfarmer]

I love guys that send their water onto my land. I don't let it escape. The stuff of life if you know how to capture, store and use it.

[ProFarmer]

I wish there was a way I could bottle it and send it to California.

[TOM4CWB]

Pro,

They are making the turn in CALIFORNIA;

Deep snow in California mountains offers hope in drought

Reuters
By Sharon Bernstein
December 30, 2015

Frank Gehrke walks to one of the survey points during the first snow survey of winter conducted by the California Department of Water Resources in Phillips, California, December 30, 2015. [He measured 120/58"-136/54.7" percent of normal/deep! Water content of snow in the mountains was at 105 percent of normal... the highest since 2012]

REUTERS/Fred Greaves
By Sharon Bernstein

PHILLIPS, Calif. (Reuters) - A cold, wet start to California's winter has dumped nearly five feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains, state water experts said Wednesday, fueling hope that 2016 will bring enough precipitation to help offset four years of drought.

Snow surveyors headed to the mountains in Phillips near Lake Tahoe on Wednesday for the first manual check of the state's snowpack this winter, dipping a long measuring pole into a snow-covered meadow at seven different points to see how deep the white stuff was.

"There's hope that we will have much more than we had last year," said Frank Gehrke, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program.

His measurements confirmed data gathered earlier in the month by electronic snow sensors showing that the snowpack, which provides a third of the state's water when it melts in the spring, was above normal for the first time in three years.

At the Phillips Station monitoring site, snow was 54.7 inches deep on Wednesday, or about 136 percent of average. At nearby Lyons Creek, snow was 58 inches deep, or 120 percent of average.

Statewide, electronic monitors showed that the water content of snow in the mountains was at 105 percent of normal, above average for the first time since 2012.

By comparison, the snowpack was just 20 percent of normal on Dec. 30, 2013, and 50 percent of normal on Dec. 30, 2014.

California is in its fourth year of crushing drought that has killed millions of trees and in 2015 alone cost the state's agricultural economy $1.84 billion and 10,100 jobs, according to the University of California, Davis.

The El Nino weather and oceanic phenomenon, characterized by a warming of the Pacific Ocean that often brings precipitation to California, may help ease the drought over the next few months, but experts caution that the state's woes are far from over.

A warm winter could cause snow in the mountains to melt too soon, leading to a shortage of water in the state's dry spring and summer.

So far, the snow has stuck, prompting ski resorts to open early and sending thousands to the mountains, braving long lift lines and thronging parking lots even on a Wednesday.

"This year is so much better than last year," said Duke Walton of Sacramento, who was at the Sierra-at-Tahoe ski resort with his family on Wednesday. "Last year, half the lifts were closed."

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

[fjlip]

Pro farmer, these are Sask Party regulations, just stating facts, some land drains naturally, that is the lucky areas.

[Jay-mo]

Good post JamesB.
I've always thought a full slough does not absorb any water.
Whereas the same area, properly drained, growing a healthy crop could be absorbing a lot of water between rainfalls.

[farming101]

What might be called the full to overflowing phenomenon is basic math but not well accepted.

Basin systems have formed which were never considered previously. Multiple water bodies have joined and work as a unit. So when a newly discovered outlet for a new basin starts pouring out water like a river after one inch of rain its somehow someone's fault.

[grassfarmer]

My experience with sloughs or wet areas has all been in converting farmland to pasture. At the outset the sloughs are full, low areas have standing water. After establishing pasture and managing it so deep rooted plants flourish the water level in the slough drops and the low lying areas have no more standing water. After a while ( maybe 2 or 3 years) the water level rises again in the slough but not to as high as it was originally. When you get extreme weather events like torrential rain it just disappears into the grassland but 2 or 3 days later the level in the slough will rise but then abate over time.

That is a working water cycle.

Your grain farming practices of growing short rooted crops, only having something living growing there for 4 months of the year is the problem. You are destroying the natural water cycle and no amount of drainage will cure that problem. Look at riparian management - all good practise points to the need to have vegetation on the banks to slow the movement of water away. Yet you are trying to speed the exodus of water from your farmland. Opening up channels so the land floods worse when you get a big rain because the land isn't holding the quantity it could. Fighting nature is a battle you will never win.

[Klause]

Grass you have never lived anywhere wet in Canada.

Explain why all the pastureland around Guernsey sk has turned into water cattails and ducks.


FYI canada has winter... it dictates the length of the growing season... things grow from thaw to freeze... if you've ever dug trenches most prairie grasses and even trees like aspens are extremely shallow rooted...

I agree keeping things growing especially things with long roots like clover is a good thing but it's not a solution to 28 inches of rain in 6 weeks

[grassfarmer]

So which month and a half where recorded 28 inches of rainfall?