These hailstones fell Thursday afternoon just north of Star City (Submitted photo/Yvonne Day)

By Cam Lee

Storm Damage

Crops battered by hail, wind across the northeast

Jul 3, 2020 | 10:01 AM

Much of the northeast is cleaning up after a significant storm passed through on Thursday, July 2.

While the storm generally didn’t stay long in one particular area, it was quite intense, bringing with it heavy rain, strong wind and hail to many parts of the region.

Kim Stonehouse is a Crops Extension Specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture based in Tisdale.

He said the wind and the hail did the most damage to crops across the northeast, and some of the hardest-hit fields were in the Arborfield-Zenon Park-Carrot River area.

“There [was] hail really from Crooked River right to Melfort and going north of there,” Stonehouse told farmnewsNOW. “Star City got hit pretty hard too. Zenon Park had a bunch of bins knocked over in that area.”

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The storm seemed to intensify north of Highway 3, Stonehouse said, and it looks like those areas north of the highway have sustained the most damage.

“It was a pretty widespread event for the northeast region for sure,” Stonehouse said.

He said most crops are in the late flag leaf to early heading stage, while most of the canola crops will be cabbaging to early bolting stages.

“A lot of these plants will get holes punched in their leaves and things like that and leaves knocked off…which will slow their growth,” Stonehouse said. “It could damage them to the point where some of the plants may even die.”

The intensity and duration of the hail could be major factors in whether plants sustain serious damage, according to Stonehouse. He said some crops will have significant damage, while others will have minor damage.

The real damage will be assessed by the crop insurance and hail adjustors, Stonehouse said, and the full scale of the damage done likely won’t be known for a couple of weeks to a month.

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cam.lee@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @camlee1974