Storm creates harvesting challenges in some areas

A major storm system moved through central parts of the province on Wednesday evening, bringing strong wind, rain, and hail for areas from North Battleford to Rosthern and from Saskatoon to Humboldt.

Some crops were badly damaged by hail, but even those that missed hail, could have a challenging harvest.

Dean Roberts, the producer-elected Chair of SaskOilseeds, farms in the Coleville area located about 30 kilometres north of Kindersley. He said they missed out on the latest storm but received golf ball size hail in a previous storm the week prior.

"I haven't really heard how big the hail was first-hand, but it was significant." Roberts said of last week's storm.

Driving into Saskatoon on Thursday morning, Roberts witnessed quite a bit of lodging which will cause harvesting challenges such as slowing down the pace of combining.

"When you go in with your combine harvester, you're going to extend your pickup reel out, you're going to drop your header right under the ground, and you're going to hope and pray you don't ingest a rock or large chunks of dirt that are going to wear your combine out, plug it, burn up belts. So you're going to go slow and tedious and try and rake that crop off the ground and hopefully preserve the grade because that's the big risk. If it stays wet for too long, it's not a premium grade anymore." said Roberts. "Some of the crop I saw today, a week ago we'd have been going five miles an hour; now it's probably one and a half or two miles an hour because you have to take all that wet heavy plant matter, put it through the combine and again hope you don't damage something in the middle."