JANUARY 2017 • COUNTRY LIFE IN BC


Winter wallop Rain, snow hit farms hard


by TAMARA LEIGH


DELTA – The Fraser Valley and South Coast have experienced one of the wettest autumns on record but that didn’t stopped farmers from getting their crops in.


“Harvest came off okay for us, and I think everybody got their potatoes out. With the early start we got this year, everything was ready in September,” says Jack Bates, who runs a mixed farm operation with his brothers in Delta. “We’re way above average for rainfall – we only had two or three days in November without rain here – but once the crops are out, it’s fine. It’s been a well-timed year.”


According to Environment Canada, average temperatures from September to November 2016 were the warmest ever, and rainfall for Vancouver and the Lower Mainland was the second highest on record. “It was a very wet fall with a lot of storms on the coast. Things really changed at the end of November,” says Trevor Smith, meteorologist with Environment Canada.


Flood North Arm Farm in


Pemberton felt the cumulative impact of the warm, wet weather in early November, when waters from the Lillooet River rose quickly and flooded its property.


“We’ve been here about 30 years and this is the third large flood we’ve had,” says Trish Jordan. “It’s a typical situation when we get a lot of early snow in the hills. We have tons of snow up there, and then got a huge rainfall event and the ground was already saturated.”


The quick rise and fall of the water claimed their winter


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vegetables and left a mess of silt and sludge behind in the fields and outbuildings. According to Jordan, the flooding situation was made worse by a lack of diking in the lower Pemberton Valley. “If you left nature to itself, the water would come up a little bit for everyone and go down again. Now, all the high water through the upper valley gets funneled through the diking system and comes shooting down at us,” she explains. “The thing is it doesn’t really have to be like this. We all pay diking taxes; maybe we should get some dikes.”


Bad timing


Growers in the Peace may have experienced the worst of bad timing and heavy precipitation this year. Snow fell September 30 and it has been snowing or raining ever since. As much as 20% of the crop still sits under snow in some areas, and quality for cereal crops has been downgraded to #3 or feed quality.


“Toward the end of August, when we were going to start harvesting wheat, it rained for about two weeks. The cereals are all sprouting standing. It was a good crop, good yield, but the grade in the cereals is totally shot,” says Rick Kantz, president of the BC Grain Producers Association. “It’s going to be tough year for a lot of our growers.” Looking ahead,


Environment Canada is forecasting a fairly average winter across BC.


“This winter, the El Niña southern oscillation is in a neutral phase. It’s neither La Niña or El Niña; some people call it La Nada,” says meteorologist Smith. “In a normal winter, the south coast will see two or three outbreaks


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It’s not the first time North Arm Farm in Pemberton has been flooded but it’s no less heartbreaking for Trish Jordan, who says they lost their winter vegetable crop. NORTH ARM FARM PHOTO


of Arctic air. The problem with seasonal forecasts is they


average out temperature over three months, so it doesn’t tell


you about the weather or any extremes that may happen.”


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