Farmers, land managers, Indigenous communities and municipalities will be able to get a handle on what kind of flood conditions are headed for them for free this spring.
The Manitoba Forage and Grassland Association (MFGA) will be offering free access to their water forecasting tool during the spring runoff.
“As a farmer-led group, we want farmers, land managers and communities to benefit from our model during the annual spring thaw where waters can rise and fluctuate on short notice,” the group’s chair, Mike Duguid, said in a news release April 16.
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Brandon University’s Rural Development Institute has found that many rural and small municipalities in Manitoba don’t have staff or resources to make formal climate plans against natural disaster.
“The option to access our model for free and in a pinch can help plan and prepare for what’s coming down the waterways or running across fields.”
The Aquanty digital forecasting tool is designed to provide farmers with short-term forecasts of how much water is coming at them from upstream, MGFA executive director Duncan Morrison told the Co-operator in an early 2023 interview.
In the long-term, its analysis of historic water movement can assist in crop rotation or livestock movement plans.
“Where this tool really shines is that it will give individual farmers the ability to access that technology on their iPhones, tablets, laptops or home computer systems. It’s very exciting,” Morrison said.
It’s the next evolution of the MFGA’s years long Aquanty project. The association previously tapped Ontario-based hydrologic modelling firm Aquanty Inc. to develop an in-depth model of the Assiniboine River Basin and sub-basins. That project allowed local communitieis and groups to run simulations predicting the outcomes of certain water projects or water management policies, and has been used in local flood and drought planning since its completion in 2018.
The MFGA later announced it was expanding the Aquanty project from that case-by-case modelling into a customizable forecasting tool. It expanded its modelling to the Pembina River Valley region and rolled out forecasting capability for both the Assiniboine region and Pembina River region in 2023.
The models incorporate data like weather forecasts, historical weather data, snow cover, melt rates, soil moisture and groundwater levels, all drawn from a network of sensors and years of field-level crop inventory numbers. Parameters are then set to reflect how water is known to move across the landscape and through the subsurface.
“When all of that data is fed into a model, we can run the model in real time in order to produce a forecast,” said Aquanty senior scientist Steven Frey at MFGA’s Regenerative Ag Conference last year.
The MFGA Aquanty Project forecasting tool can be accessed on mfga.net.
Flood risk 2024
To date, the risk of significant flooding in Manitoba has been forecasted to be low to moderate, as per the most recent provincial forecast released March 26. Lake levels were at normal to below-normal, and the Red River Floodway was expected to take the flood season off.
The Shellmouth Reservoir was being operated to reduce the risk of flooding downstream on the Assiniboine River.
However, at the time of writing, a Colorado low was bearing down in the Prairies and threatening significant precipitation.
On April 15, the province issued an overland flood warning for areas of northwestern Manitoba, including Swan River, the Pas and Flin Flon.
A flood warning was also in place for the Assiniboine River between the Shellmouth Dam and Brandon. Water levels there were expected to be over the banks until the first week of May.
Snowmelt and spring runoff were nearly complete in most of southern Manitoba, the province said.
