World Weather Inc's Drew Lerner Gives Prairie Outlook

World Weather Inc's Senior Agriculture Meteorologist Drew Lerner is giving his weather outlook for the next couple of months.

"Kind of status quo for the next two months," he said. "February and January both will end up being pretty much as it has been. We'll have a drier bias across a big part of the southern sections of Alberta, big part of Saskatchewan and probably some areas in Manitoba. Manitoba will probably do a little bit better, and western Alberta will do a lot better than anybody, but they don't want to do a lot better. They want a little drier weather and I don't think that's coming right away."

Lerner talked about what to expect in terms of temperatures.

"The temperatures will stay warmer bias in the west, most definitely. There will be a couple shots of cold air coming up, but in general it will be a very warm winter bias. Just like we've been seeing up to this point. In the east we'll have bigger shots of cold, they might be a little bit more long lasting but they are not going to be throwing the mean for the entire winter below normal."

He notes many areas on the Prairies are currently short on soil moisture.

"For the most part we still have a lot of moisture deficit leftover from the past 2 years. Even though there's some surface moisture out there from recent precipitation or that which occurred in the autumn and some snow that's melted recently, down below we are hurting in many ways. In the northern and western parts of Alberta, it's way too wet and they do need to see a drier bias, and we're hoping that maybe this El Niño bias we have this year will help them out a little bit. In Manitoba, it's a little bit more of a mixed bag. It's fairly wet in the north, there's some pockets in the south that are doing better but there's still moisture deficits left over from the past two years."

Lerner was guest speaker at the 2019 MFSA Forage Seed Conference held January 7 in Winnipeg.