The prairies are staying dry over the winter as the federal government's newest drought maps are showing the lack of moisture is sticking around.
The map, released monthly, details moisture levels across the country and classifies them between D0, abnormally dry, and D4, exceptional drought.
Trevor Hadwen, an agri-climate specialist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, says the assessment isn't changing much month-to-month.
"For Saskatchewan itself, we didn't see a whole lot of changes, to be honest, when we're looking at the assessment, conditions haven't degraded enough to make it jump to another class and the only real improvement we saw was kind of in that central part of the province around Saskatoon."
A concern in Western Saskatchewan is still holding strong, as they're on the edge of a severe drought system hitting Alberta.
"We're seeing more degradation in Alberta, to be honest. In southern Alberta, we still have a very large pocket of exceptional drought," said Hadwen, "We typically don't see those during the winter period and those have held on right through the fall period and from earlier in this summer.
"We've got a large pocket along the East Central part of Alberta, Brooks and North, that is is kind of in that D4 or exceptional drought pocket and then a fairly large pocket that contains most of that southern and central region that is either in a D2 or D3, so extreme or severe drought conditions throughout much of southern Alberta."
The only exception has been a bit more moisture coming in south of Medicine Hat to provide some relief.
Manitoba is faring the best out of the three prairie provinces but is still running into its own issues.
"Manitoba has also been fairly dry in that southern area, so especially South of Brandon we're seeing drought conditions at severe rating. They certainly weren't as bad as Saskatchewan and Alberta going into the winter period, so a little bit better conditions there, but it's still well below normal in terms of snowpack."
For those regions currently experiencing drought, Hadwen says producers and provinces are preparing for what could be a dry growing season.
"Just in terms of the land area, we're kind of in a really interesting situation.40% of Canada's land area is considered in drought with 56% of the agricultural land within Canada in drought. So that's fairly high numbers for this time of year especially, so there's a lot of concern for drought right now."