When it comes to weather in Alberta, the one thing you can rely on is that it will surprise you.

This winter was no different as the snow and cold started in October, but melted during a mild December, only to come back with vengeance in January for a cold snap that lasted well into April.

Even though this past winter seemed like it dragged on forever, it was actually normal when you look at the amount of snow we received, even though some areas around Red Deer saw the coldest temperatures in 25 years, and in some cases in at least 50.

In terms of how this will affect area farmers, is still too early to tell, even though most are already about two weeks behind their usual seeding schedule.

Ralph Wright is the Head of the Agrometeorological Applications and Modeling Section with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry, and he says the current forecast of warm weather with little rain in the immediate future is ideal for farmers to get started.

But, it's still early to predict how the rest of the year will go.

“What we really don’t want to see is a really wet spring now. The effects of the weather we are having as of late really won’t be known until the fall. A farmer can be seeding in early June and as long as they don’t see frost until towards the end of September they will be just fine.”

Wright says this is only the third year in the last ten where the snowpack lingered this long, with April 20th being the date things started to increase temperature wise.

Wright says the lingering snow pack from early in the year combined with a few quick melts, made it appear like we had more snow than we actually had.

“If you take a look at over winter accumulations until about November 1st until around April, our area was about 1 in 6-12 year lows in some areas, some places maybe 1 in 3 year lows, so really this winter was relatively dry compared to a lot of other winters.”

The highest snowfall ever recorded in our area was in 1974, when we received 4 times the amount of moisture we received this year.