The heat wave may have ended for Waterloo Region, but the hot and humid temperatures are sticking around for the work week.
For local farmers, that’s a bit troublesome.
The combination of hot weather and lack of rain has farmers struggling to get enough moisture in the ground.
Trevor Herrle-Braun from Herrle’s Country Farm Market says their water ponds are nearing the half way mark.
“August is coming up and we still have a lot of irrigation to do but we have used up half of our water supplies already and we have still have half of our growing season to go,” says Herrle-Braun.
The lack of rain means that Herrle-Braun has to water the full 250 acres on the family farm, a process that usually happens overnight.
Night-time irrigation reduces the amount of evaporation.
For Herrle-Braun that means long days and even longer nights.
On most nights he's up until the early morning hours to watch the water and pump levels on his irrigation system.
“We are limited with so many hours in the day and so many hours at night that we can irrigate our crops,” says Herrle-Braun.
The warm temperatures are caused by what Canada’s Chief Meteorologist David Philips says is a heat dome.
“Inside that dome, there's really no weather in a way. There's no precipitation. It's hot it's dry and the sun is baking the ground and even when the warm air rises it kind of is compressed and returns back. It becomes very stale air,” says Philips.
The longer the heat dome sticks around, the air gets hotter and the ground drier.
So far this year, Southern Ontario has had at least four heat dome episodes and a total of twenty days where temperatures are above 30 degrees.
While getting enough water into the ground has proven to be a challenge for farmers, it seems the crops, are thriving.
The warm temperatures has translated into bumper strawberry and blueberry crops.
“It’s been really hot, which is great, fruits and vegetables they love dry weather,” says Herrle-Braun.
