Seasonal sectors face slow start due to soggy weather

Months of wet weather have brought with them a slow start to summer for Manitoba landscapers, farmers and some seasonal businesses.

“It’s just too muddy to do anything,” said Rick Aubin, owner of Vintage Landscaping in Carman.

Aubin has been working in lawn care and landscaping since 1995, and said 2024 might be the wettest start to the season he’s seen. His crews have been busy just trying to keep up with lawn mowing because of extra growth after the rains, but the work is slower when everything is wet.

It’s a stark contrast from weeks of dry heat last year.

“I don’t think I’ve seen it this bad. I can’t remember a year like this, that it’s been rainy right up until July,” Aubin said.

Precipitation was at above-normal levels for May and June, leaving some farm fields saturated, with high water in ditches.

Many farmers got a good start to the season and now need “the taps, so to speak, turned off for a bit,” said Jill Verwey, president of Keystone Agricultural Producers.

Most growers in the province were likely able to get the majority of their crops seeded in good time before the worst of the rains, but there are still some unseeded acres, she said.

“The majority of the province is pretty saturated with the weather systems that have been coming through. That will definitely hamper abilities to get out there and spray,” said Verwey, who farms in the Portage la Prairie area.

“With the cereal crops, I think we’re ahead on maturity and looking really well, but I think they’re going to see significant stress in the next little while if the rain doesn’t subside a bit. You’re starting to see some yellowing in the fields because of excess moisture.”

The good news for southern Manitoba farmers: daily-high temperatures next week are forecast to rise to low- to mid-30s C.

“There’s a little bit of a heat wave that we’re looking at into next week, so there’s a little bit of a change from what we’ve had so far this year,” said Alysa Pederson, an Edmonton-based meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada.

The typical June daily average in Winnipeg is 17 C. Temperatures over the past month averaged 16.5 C, “just a hair below normal,” Pederson said.

However, it has rained more than normal throughout May and June.

Winnipeg logged double the expected amount of rain in May: 114 millimetres, compared to a typical monthly average of 56 mm. In June, it recorded 103 mm, above the monthly average of 90 mm.

Thunderstorms continued to ring in July, including overnight Monday and early Tuesday afternoon. Canada Day storms were intense in some regions, bringing roughly 30 mm of rain. The Gretna area, close to the U.S. border, logged near double that number.

“It was a little bit wetter than what we might be used to seeing, but it wasn’t too remarkable of a year (to date),” Pederson said.

Meanwhile, the rain hasn’t put a damper on home construction.

Builders are used to getting a lot done in all kinds of weather, said Lanny McInnes, president and CEO of the Manitoba Home Builders’ Association. There could be delays in back-filling and getting foundations poured if it’s too wet, but the rain isn’t a major concern for industry members, he added.

However, they’d like to have the ability to get new builds hooked up with electricity earlier in the construction process and are working with Manitoba Hydro to do so, McInnes said. Crews in the province typically use generators, including to pump out any water, until late in construction, but electricity is generally safer than diesel-powered generators, McInnes said.

“The use of generators is a safety concern in this type of weather.”

Though it’s made things a bit soggy, the rain hasn’t been all bad, especially if a bit of heat is on the horizon, Aubin said.

The Carman landscaper also grows corn and said usually he has to irrigate the crop. “This year, we definitely didn’t have to do that.”

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