The occasional spring snowfall is not unusual for Western Canada, bringing additional moisture prior to seeding.
Parts of southern Alberta including areas around Calgary, Olds, Airdrie, Beiseker and Three Hills received another blast of winter over the weekend, with more snow overnight making travel challenging.
Meteorologist Drew Lerner with World Weather Inc says a significant snowstorm is going to continue to occur in the southeast part of Saskatchewan and southwestern Manitoba today with some other areas seeing some light snow or rain.
He says in Saskatchewan most of this adversity will be to the east of Hwy. 47 running from Estevan up towards the Melville area.
"The closer you get to the Manitoba border, the more intense the snow is likely to be. There may be a number of areas they get certainly 10 to 20 centimeters of snow with local totals in the 20 to 40 cm range potentially, but most of those greater amounts will be over the Manitoba border. Probably from the Roblin area, over to Dauphin and from there southward towards the Oak Lake area, and perhaps reaching into the Carlisle area of Saskatchewan."
He points out the majority of that is expected to be a concentrated area of very heavy snow, while a mix of rain and snow is also being reported in other areas of Saskatchewan in the south and West Central area.
"There will be some accumulating snow out in some of these other areas, but only a dusting upwards to around four or five centimetres is expected. There may be an exception or two, mostly up around Lake Diefenbaker."
While it may be making travel challenging the additional moisture coming in any form prior to spring seeding is a welcome site for many farmers.
Heading into Spring Seeding farmers are being reminded about the importance of soil testing and not just at the six to 12 inch depth, but at the surface as well.
Scientists note that since we've gone to zero till any product added to the soil especially in a dry year tends to sit in the soil where it's placed as the moisture is needed to push it down into the soil.