Rain

[cowman]

Well it is raining here. Hardly know what it looks like but I'm pretty sure it is rain! Got about 1/2 inch a few days ago and 6/10 about 10 days ago. That was it since the middle of June basically! I'm actually going to have to cut the lawn!
Even though it was dry we raised some pretty good crops! Wheat around 65 bu. and barley in that 80-90 range! One dairy farmer got 125 bu. of Dolly barley! This was on heavily manured land! Everything weighing up real heavy and super high protein. No canola off yet but it looks pretty good.
Lots of hay around and lots of straw! Reality hasn't set in yet on the price side but it will!

[cakadu]

We are starting to see some rain as well, but not as much as others. With any luck, our turn will come, after the crops have come off. We got about 2/10th a week ago and on Friday about 1/2 inch, so that's not too bad, but we need a lot more.

Seems like the further West you go, the less rain is falling and it is patchy. Last week when we got the 2/10th, one fellow who lives about 10 miles from me said they got absolutely nothing out of the system.

Guess you have to be living right for all that rain.

Cheers!

[cowman]

Linda: I heard an interesting theory about rain in Central Alberta. The guy who ran it past me runs a weather station in west central Alta. He says we've been getting dryer the last ten years because of all the logging Sunpine has been doing on the eastern slopes of the Rockies. He says there is a huge black strip of clearcut that runs pretty well the whole way. Claims it is very visible from an airplane but not from the road. When the rain clouds came over the Rockies they would naturally drop down and start to unload but now this black strip of clear cut gives off large amounts of heat which pushes the clouds up to where they can't rain. The heat meets the cold clouds and that create winds that blow the rain clouds east. By the time they cool down enough to drop they are over the eastern prairies! Therefore we don't get any rain as long as that black strip is absorbing heat from the sun and radiating it upward! He says he can show it very clearly by his weather observations over the last twenty years!
His theory sure makes sense to me!

[pandiana]

It makes a great deal of sense to me as well. Not too much we can do about it.

[cakadu]

Sounds plausible and I'm open to reasons why it is not raining the way it has in years past.

The other thing that I see as a BIG impediment to our getting rain is that every time a few clouds build up to the west of us they start to seed. I'm talking in the Raven area west of me and east of Caroline.

Now the theory is that it breaks up the clouds and doesn't allow for that big hail to develop. Seems to me with what we heard this summer, all it did was pass it along to other folks further east. If the insurance companies are doing this so we don't have to pay more in claims, then I think they are missing the boat as it is just getting passed on and we pay for it in the end anyway (and that is whether the rate hikes are justified or not.)

[carebear300]

Am getting kind of tired of the rain, don't just know how much we have accumulated but still have 25 per cent of the crop to be harvested and would like ten days of good weather to get it taken off. The forecast isn't great for the next few days either.

[cowman]

Oh Carebear, never regret some rain! Sure it puts the harvest off a bit but you know we always need the moisture. An old wise farmer once told me(after we'd had about a two week period of rain) You can never get enough rain. You may not need it now but you will pray for it sometime soon! But I don't have to tell you this, right? You've been around the block in Western Canada?

[cakadu]

Despite some pretty dry weather this year, the crops sound like they are pretty decent. One fellow in my area said that he was getting 90 to 95 bu to the acre and it went malt, so that was pretty good given the poor showing for rain all summer.

Correct me if I am wrong on this, but it seems to me that our seasons have shifted and we are starting to get the rain into the fall, which means we'll have to shift our way of thinking and how we do things in order to capture enough of that moisture to do some good year round.

I remember hearing someone say that you aren't a true grazier until you can graze through a drought. I'm not sure if that is 100% true, but it is beginning to feel that there might be a lot more truth in that than we'd care to admit.

[cowman]

Linda I've been thinking the exact same thing about the shifting seasons. Spring seems to be colder every year and fall hangs in later every year.
It almost seems like the worst winter months are now March and April instead of January and February! About six years ago I shifted my calving dates to start calving in late March. The weather was so ugly I went back to calving in Jan./Feb. Calves mostly born in the barn but out within a short time. Calf sheds and lots of straw. They just seemed a lot more healthy and vigorous. I truly came to loath mud and the wild weather swings of March and April.