Most farmers across the province, especially in the southwest are hoping for a lot more precipitation sometime soon.

Through the first five months of 2018, the weather station in Swift Current has only recorded 60 millimetres of precipitation only half of the 133-year station data's average.

John Paul Cragg, a meteorologist with Environment Canada, said that although 2015's first five months were the driest with 44 mm, this year's start isn't far behind.

"That put's Swift Current at the tenth driest five-month period from January through to May in its history," he said. "Just a little bit more precipitation than the driest first five months back in 2015."

The dry weather trend in the southwest has now continued for over a year and a half starting in November of 2016, a trend that Cragg said is very puzzling.

"Swift Current and the southwest corner and the whole of Saskatchewan has seen a lot of fluctuation in terms of precipitation they get from one year to the next, from one decade to the next, from one month to the next over its history," he said. "There's a lot of variation in precipitation.

"The atmospheric pattern has been one where low-pressure systems have not passed over the area as much as they usually do. But that doesn't give a very good reason why that's occurring. That's is something that a climatologist would have to go back and look at and look at the atmospheric pattern and see what's happening and why the patterns are set up in such a way that those low-pressure systems just aren't bring that moisture over southwestern Saskatchewan."

It's not all doom and gloom for farmers hoping to get some rain though and for those record dry conditions to change quickly.

"This time over the year all it takes is one or two good storms to move over the area and the precipitation that's lacking could be replenished quickly," Cragg added.