The rain that poured down on the southwest last week and continued this week has been a sight for sore and dry eyes of producers in the area. 

Over the last seven days, the southwest has received around 65 millimetres (2.55 inches) of rain, according to Trevor Hadwen  - an Agri-Climate Specialist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. 

Hadwen said that seeing rain is definitely good news for livestock and crop producers but it isn't going to solve all of the problems. 

"The unfortunate part, we are probably a little too late for some of the pastures and forage really to get the best productivity out of them this year," he noted. "The rain is certainly useful and will help provide a little bit of feed for livestock producers."

Hadwen added that the grass needs considerably more rain to "green up and continue to grow throughout the season," and that the drought from earlier this year and the two prior summers knocked down most pastures heavily.

It isn't all bad news for livestock producers as the rain should lighten the effect of the drought faced so far this year. 

"There will be areas that will be able to produce a little bit more feed or hay land. Some of the irrigators of hay down in the southwest will be able to utilize a little bit more moisture. There were cutbacks on some irrigation possibly this summer, those programs have been revealed by the rain. The other good news for livestock producers is the potential growth of crops in the area. If they don't develop all the way into grain quality crops, some producers might be at the point where they might harvest for grain feed rather than harvesting for grain sale." 

For crop production, Hadwen said that had been a lot of improvement. 

"We are getting into a point where the crops certainly needed a lot of moisture, and we were getting to the point where some areas were beginning contemplating using crops for animal feed rather than harvesting the crops of grain capacity. This will prevent this from occurring at least for the short term. Crops will get a good shot out of this and start to grow. We are sitting in a situation where the dry spring and intensity of some of the dryness this spring really has set back crops significantly. We are likely not looking at yields in that region that we would hope for, but certainly, we are not looking for as bad of a year as we were about a week ago." 

Hadwen said while it would have been nice to have the rain spread out over multiple weeks rather than all in the span of a couple of days, it will provide crop producers with enough moisture for a couple of weeks. 

"If we go through another month of dry weather after this big rainfall event we will right back in the situation where we were a week ago," he stated. "The ground in the area does not have any moisture reserves, and we were dealing with extremely dry conditions before this rain occurred. Right now, the ground has absorbed that moisture and is fine, but there is no reverses there for once this current rainfall moves on or evaporates." 

He adds that the timing of the next couple rainfalls is extremely important. 

"We are looking for rain again on a timely basis throughout the season to really get those crops going and continue. We still need a significant amount of moisture to get that water base back up to what we expect for the season." 

In some parts of the province, they sit 200 millimetres below normal. In Swift Current things are a lot better as the area sits 75 millimetres below normal. 

"If we got an inch of rain in two weeks and another inch in four weeks, things will progress nicely. If we got 4 inches in the next week and nothing through the rest of the year, we are still going to be having problems with the end of the year. The timing of the rain is critical. The amount of it is not as critical at this point in the year." 

Looking back at the drought so far this year, Hadwen said compared to the previous two years, this year has been the worst one so far. 

"This year on top of the two previous drought years, was one of the driest springs on record for southern Saskatchewan, and that following two dry years becomes even more problematic with higher impacts," he said. "We just didn't have the water supplies or the soil moisture reserves that we normally would going into one year of droughts. Both from an impact point of view it's much higher and from the point of view of actual rainfall. This was dryer than the previous two years and more intense of a drought for the first portion of this spring." 

Hadwen added that looking forward with the recent rainfall and more rain in the forecast, things farmers are starting to become a little more optimistic. 

"Now that we've seen a fairly significant shift in some of the weather patterns that we've experienced, there is a lot more optimism. We likely will receive more frequent rainfalls. The short term and long-term forecasts from environment Canada - those show rain in the future and if the current pattern and trend continue crop farmers will be very happy from what looked like a desperate situation a week ago."

He added that they are always interested in hearing how producers are dealing with problems related to weather on their farm and that they want to know how this rainfall has helped producers.