The mix of rain, sleet, and snow that has been falling in the Estevan is not likely to accumulate to a whole lot for the southeast today, and it doesn't seem like this spring is going to be bringing much more moisture either. As farmers in the southeast have commented, there is a need for moisture in the southeast thanks to a dry fall in 2020 and a dry winter that followed.

According to Environment Canada Meteorologist Kyle Fougere, the systeam that has brought us this little shot of rain is not going to stick around for long.

"There's a low pressure system that's moving through the province into southern Manitoba this morning and so you're not expected to have a lot of reputation and the ground is pretty warm so we're not expecting any real accumulations with today's weather. After that, things are going to clear for a couple of days, but they're going to get a little bit colder."

As for the rest of the spring, it doesn't look like there is much coming for precipitation either. With the conditions going on in South America, 

"We are expecting it to end up slightly warmer than normal, but to end up a little bit drier than normal by the end of the spring. Now spring is when we do get a lot of precipitation around the Estevan area with an average of just over 100 millimeters in the spring months. There is likely to have precipitation to come over the next couple of months, but it's possible it could end up being just a little bit drier than a normal spring this year."

Even with some of the late big dumps of snow that came in the Estevan area, this winter was especially dry. Combine that with an already dry fall before that, and the need for moisture in the southeast is big.

"It has been very dry down there and I looked at the stats and it's they got just about just about half of normal precipitation in the Estevan area over the December, January, February months of winter. 49% to be exact. So it has been dry."

While long range forecasting is not the most accurate, there is a few things that meteorologists look at to determine what exactly could be coming up. When South America experiences what's called La Nina conditions, that typically leads to colder, drier winters for us in Saskatchewan, but this year that didn't seem to happen and with the way things are trending, it seems we are avoiding the affects of the La Nina.

"We're just coming out of the La Nina winter and so typically what we see is colder than normal winters and into the spring with the La Nina, and that is the case. It's looking like BC and in the northern parts of Alberta are going to end up cooler than normal, but so far it's looking like it's not going to affect southern Saskatchewan that much. Also, La Nina is when there are warmer conditions than normal in the Eastern Pacific and we're seeing those conditions weaken so that it's kind of cooling off a bit, so we're actually expecting to come out of La Nina by the time this spring is over. That's the most likely scenario right now."