Over the past few weeks of seeding season, farmers have been keeping an eye on the sky as they were hoping it would stay clear, giving them time to get the majority of seeding done. An early rain could push back seeding for too many crops, but with no rain, they would miss out on a crucial boost for crop growth.
For better or worse, a large amount of rain has come down on the southeast, giving farmers all the moisture they asked for and more.
Agrologist Edgar Hammermeister says, by what he's seen, it actually came down at a very good time.
"We've been making really great progress. I would estimate the range of completion is 75 per cent all the way to 100, with an average being maybe about 85 per cent for the region."
For many farmers across the province, they still need to plant soybeans, which tend to be the last planted, with the province's last crop report saying those are only at 14 per cent completion across the province.
Hammermeister says we won't see as much trouble with the crop, as we're not seeing much in the way of soybeans in the southeast.
"There are certainly soybean acres that farmers put in, but as that's closer to the amount of total border, they tend to do that a little bit more. It's still early, so I think really the biggest acres remaining to go in are canola acres and a few acres of flax."
Hammermeister said the first bit of rain that came down Wednesday was more centred around the regions close to Manitoba's border, which slowed down efforts there, receiving around 15 millimetres.
As more moisture is coming down, Hammermeister says southeast farmers will be thankful for what we're getting.
"I think the farmers are quite pleased to get it. Thanks to those high temperatures that we had last week and and along with the wind, the soil was drying out very, very quickly, and it was starting to stress the crops a little bit too. So with the timing of the rain, everybody, I think, is quite pleased overall."
There is still a concern that too much rain will come down, though Hammermeister believes that timing won't be an issue.
"Because it's just the middle of May, we've still got a lot of time to get the crop in. For the canola in particular, it's a vulnerable crop to frost. So it's going in a little bit later to avoid some of those late spring frosts. I think there's some quite cold temperatures forecasted here even for this weekend, but I don't think much canola is going to be vulnerable to that. It's in the ground but not up yet. So we should get through that."
Hammermeister is confident that even if temperatures dip into the negatives, the crops more vulnerable to frost haven't emerged yet and as such we shouldn't see too much damage from cold nights.
Seeding is likely to stall for the next week or so following this rain, as farmers need to wait for the moisture to leave before they can be back in the fields.