James Pascual
Farmers forum
WINDSOR — Ontario farmers can expect a warmer than normal spring and summer, according to Environment Canada’s senior climatologist David Phillips.
While American climatologists are forecasting a warmer and wetter spring and summer, rainfall is too hard to predict, Phillips said. “Precipitation is a crapshoot.”
Everything is “really, really looking good” for farming, Phillips told Farmers Forum. He added that March experienced slightly more normal temperatures and it always helps when March doesn’t warm up too much, he said. He recalled the warm March of 2012 that confused apple trees that blossomed early and later suffered from killing frost. Orchard growers suffered from one of their worst harvests in recent memory. “It devastated the apple industry,” he said.
He added that March also saw higher than normal rainfall, which is helpful for spring planting. “Farmers won’t need to pray for moisture.” In fact, the last 11 months have seen warmer than normal temperatures, he said. “We’ve been on a remarkable string of warmer than normal months.”
There will be very little winterkill, he said, adding that “I’m looking for bad news and I don’t see that on the horizon.”
He said that farmers should not worry about snowfall in April because it will be gone by the next day. In 85 years of compiling Toronto weather statistics, there have been only two years without an April snowfall, he said.
