Snow throughout Southern Alberta stretching up to central areas of the province has thrown a wrench in farmers' harvest plans.

Alberta Agriculture and Forestry Crop Specialist, Mark Cutts, says the snow can create harvest issues if it flattens the crops, and farmers will now have to wait for fields to dry up before they get out combining again.

According to Cutts, the big dump of snow spread from the Southeastern corner of the Province, up through Calgary and North West to Clear Water County.

He adds, out West and down to Pincher Creek some areas saw up to 70 centimeters of snow.

Cutts explains in the Department's latest crop report, Southern Alberta has harvested about 75 per cent of it's acres as of Monday, September 23.

"Assuming there was some more done between Monday and when the snow hit, maybe 80 per cent done in Southern Alberta, so there's obviously still some acres affected by that."

Cutts says in Central Alberta there's lots of crops behind in maturity compared normal.

However, he believes farmers got a lot of the canola swathed they were planning to before the temperatures dropped.

"Obviously there's straight cut canola as well, so if those crops were enough far along, then the impact of the [frost] risk should be fairly minimal, but if there was a crop that's still on the green side, then there would certainly be a risk of potentially having some green seed issues if they weren't quite at the right stage to avoid the impact of the frost."

To view the latest crop report, you can visit their website.

 

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