So now that the season is over and we are into late fall there is some data that has come out that plots the 2022 drought across Canada. So to be clear there was drought in some areas of Canada and not in others and really year over year this is the case. So places get rain or more rain than usual and other places get less rain than usual or in our case - No rain for over 4 monthes.
The Manitoba Cooperators agricultural news paper published an excellent map that shows the areas and severity of drought across Canada. In our last blog we discussed the harvest and about the drought and the impact the drought had on some of the grapes this year.
For the most part the grape varieties did ok but some vines really suffered and that impacted the quality of grape and even disrupted the ripening. As always when we have an unuasual event we learn and adjust and while we will adjust pruning on some varieties, we now know that Arrow Lakes Vineyard is parked on some remarkably deep and moisture retentive soil.
https://www.manitobacooperator.ca/daily/drought-expands-across-western-prairies/
The map here shows the drought areas in Canada for the 2022 season and the red areas on the map are zones of extreme drought. Arrow Lakes Vineyard is located in the largest red area in the south west quadrant of British Columbia. We have added a expanded view section, with a yellow star, to show where we placed on the drough map.
Remarkably, no rain and beyond tinder dry but hardly any forest fires in our area this year - bit of a silver lining but for the most part its the passing rainstorms and lightning that are responsible for the majority of forest fires. So goes to say, no rain, no storms, no fires.
