You don’t have to be a meteorologist, hydrologist,
agronomist or even biologist to realize North Dakota’s weather in 2019 is going
to go down in history for mostly the wrong reasons.
Winter lasted too long and then the summer wasn’t hot
enough and ended to soon. Fall was cool and brought too much rain. An October
snowstorm hit much of North Dakota on opening weekend of pheasant season, which
turned this treasured weekend into more of an exercise in dealing with snow and
closed roads rather than chasing birds in
some places.
That was quite a contrast to the pheasant opener on Oct.
10, 2015, when the daytime high was 97 degrees – a record high for the day, and
the entire month in West Fargo. Hunters that year were worried about heat
stress on dogs and taking care to not spark a fire on tinder-dry grasslands.
This year the high temperature in Fargo on
the Oct. 12 pheasant opener was 34 degrees. Interstates 94 and 29 were closed because
of accumulated snow and high winds.
As I write this during mid-November, the influences of
that storm, and several significant rain events before and after, are still
evident every time the temperature gets above freezing for any length of time. Even
good rural roads in parts of the state have turned into muddy skating rinks,
preventing farmers from initiating, let alone completing, harvests, and deer
hunters from getting to traditional spots.
In many places, record fall precipitation, combined
with unseasonably cold temperatures, has influenced outdoor activity by just
about everyone at some point.
Such is life on the prairie, we tell ourselves. We
enjoy Thanksgiving and look for the good, while realistically knowing that the
coming winter and next spring could bring additional sets of undesirable circumstances.
Even so, when it comes to weather extremes and
wildlife and fish, there is often some sort of silver lining. A significant
cold stretch from the last part of October into November meant an early start
to ice fishing in parts of the state.
The threat of winterkill on a number of North Dakota
fishing lakes has also diminished with additional water. Greg Power, fisheries
chief for the State Game and Fish Department, said on the Nov. 21 edition of
Outdoors Online, the agency’s weekly web-based video news program, that perhaps
30 to 40 North Dakota lakes would have been at risk for winterkill with just
normal winter weather.
And that would have been on top of three dozen or so
other lakes that experienced significant fish kills last winter.
The added water not only will prevent some short-term
losses, but it also sets the stage for improved natural spawning conditions for
pike and perch, and improved survival of stocked fish.
The anticipated fish production won’t necessarily
benefit anglers right away, but Power says fish populations are already in good
shape in many lakes around the state, which is a positive thought to hold onto
as winter approaches.
