World Weather Agri-Meteorologist Drew Lerner was the keynote speaker for the SaskCanola AGM in Saskatoon last Monday.

He told producers it will not be as wet in the 2017 growing season as it was last year - but don't expect many dry patterns until later in the summer and stretching into harvest.

"The spring season will end up being good enough that we'll be able to get rid of some of those moisture surpluses and be able to get out in the fields.

It's not going to be ideal, but we'll be able to get some of those crops out of the fields and get some of the crop in.

Then we'll be able to have some regularly occuring rainfall in the summer, and then a dry finish - and who can ask for a better deal than a dry finish," he said

Lerner also looked at 18-year weather cycles when making his long-term forecasts.

He says the closest comparison is 1981, which was pretty much average for temperature and precipitation.

"The 18-year cycle is being very inconsistent right now. There's a lot of other smaller cycles that are out there that are hanging around.

Any one of them could be more significant as time goes on. It creates more of a challenge in the long-range forecasting, as almost anything can go - so we have to be careful," he said.

At this point, he believes there will be more precipitation in early summer before the rain eases off later in the growing season and into harvest.