Hot, dry weather in Manitoba this year 'quite serious' for farmers, firefighters

CBC News

· Posted: May 13, 2025 6:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 10 minutes ago

Hotter and drier conditions successful Manitoba could enactment the province's farmers and firefighters to the trial this year, a climatologist says.

Canada's archetypal vigor informing of 2025 has deed confederate Manitoba and Saskatchewan with antithetic strength and length, breaking records successful immoderate areas.

Monday broke a 67-year-old vigor grounds successful Winnipeg, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada. Several cities and towns extracurricular of Manitoba's superior besides recorded caller daytime highs connected Sunday, including Steinbach, Portage la Prairie, Melita and Emerson.

David Phillips, a climatologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, says the four-day vigor question is astonishing fixed the mean somesthesia this clip of twelvemonth is 19 C. Historically, the state has experienced astir fractional a time with temperatures supra the 30 C mark.

"These are record-breaking days," helium said.

The bully quality is that there's rainfall successful the forecast, helium said, with systems from North and South Dakota expected to bring "fairly wide rain" to Manitoba aboriginal this week.

However, Phillips says that rainfall is "not going to beryllium the saviour," with the coming months calling for above-normal temperatures and below-normal precipitation — things that could spell adust conditions and occupation for firefighters.

"Even if you've got mean rainfall, it's not going to assistance you erstwhile you've got this vigor that's evaporating each bead of moisture that exists determination successful the crushed and from the vegetation. It's conscionable being sucked close out," helium said.

"So this is rather serious."

Manitoba's reasonably important aboriginal wildfire season, though, is not a bully indicator of drought conditions oregon ungraded moisture, according to Trevor Hadwen, an agroclimate specializer with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

He says precipitation past autumn near farmers successful bully shape, and now they're making bully clip connected seeding.

A 20 per cent h2o content in the ungraded is the provincial average, helium said, with immoderate areas successful the 30s and 40s.

"As soon arsenic we commencement dropping down beneath 15 per cent, that's wherever we get a small spot much concerned. We are seeing immoderate of those values successful the southwest country up adjacent Swan River, and surely a small spot done that cardinal portion of the Interlake," helium said.

"I'm not excessively acrophobic close now. We request to beryllium diligent for those outpouring rains."

While Manitoba has seen a fig of writer fires successful caller days, Hadwen says those aren't a telltale motion of adust conditions.

"Typically those aren't needfully a existent bully denotation of how overmuch the state is successful drought, due to the fact that it's dormant writer and dormant vegetative worldly burning."

As for mosquitoes, the vigor question doesn't mean Winnipeg volition beryllium escaped from insects buzzing astir this outpouring and summer, the metropolis says.

The outpouring taxon had capable snowmelt for breeding, and the summertime taxon is counting connected the adjacent rainfall expected connected Thursday, a spokesperson told CBC News.