Saskatchewan Releases Spring Runoff Forecast

The Water Security Agency's Spring Runoff Forecast shows conditions still vary across the province.

Sean Osmar says last year's hot, dry conditions caused most areas of the province to go into winter with drier than normal moisture conditions.

Despite significant amounts of snow, some areas with dry conditions at freeze-up are still predicted to have normal to below normal runoff, particularly in the south and southwest areas.

When doing the forecast, WSA builds into their modelling expected snowfall that we could still see in a normal year.

Osmar says even taking that into account, the southwest is still well below normal for runoff.

"We've seen some recent snow, particularly around Moose Jaw in this area, but we're still below normal. Now we have a few weeks left of potential snowfall, and then hopefully we warm up to get rainfall, but as it stands now, we're still dry throughout the southwest."

Once you get east of Moose Jaw towards Weyburn conditions return to near normal, and there's a pocket just around Regina where runoff is forecasted to be slightly above normal.

According to the forecast, things seem to improve as you move into the South East corner going from below normal to near normal, while below normal to near normal runoff is expected for most of the North East, with above normal runoff expected north of Prince Albert and Nipawin.

He says while we've seen some healthy snow falls, particularly across the central part of the province, which have helped improve soil conditions, we're still below normal in the south and southwest .