{"id":487055,"date":"2026-02-20T06:40:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T06:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/487055\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T06:40:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T06:40:13","slug":"water-supplies-in-southern-alberta-strong-in-early-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/487055\/","title":{"rendered":"Water supplies in southern Alberta strong in early 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

The majority of mountain snowpack sites surveyed reported higher or much higher than typical levels. <\/p>\n

\t\"\"\/<\/p>\n

Mountain runoffs are forecast to be normal to above the 30-year average in the Oldman River basin and normal in the Milk River basin. Both are considered to be \u201cWell above the 2025 observed March-September volumes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grant Hunter, Minister of Environment and Protected Areas, says, after three consecutive years of low early-season water supply forecasts, current conditions are the most favourable since early 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is great news for our farmers, businesses, communities, and all Albertans who use and rely on water each and every day. We will continue closely monitoring our supply over the coming months and keep working to help build a more drought-resilient province,\u201d says Hunter.<\/p>\n

Southern Albertans received a decent amount of snow in mid-February, but as of Feb. 4, areas around Lethbridge were slightly lagging in soil moisture. Closer towards the Rockies, greater amounts of moisture were detected in the ground.<\/p>\n

Agriculture Minister RJ Sigurdson adds that they are taking a whole-government approach to managing provincial water systems to ensure Albertans have a safe, reliable water supply.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere have been plenty of challenges thrown at our farmers and ranchers over the past few years and, while growing conditions were better in 2025 for most of the province, localized weather events and other stressors put pressure on many producers,\u201d says Sigurdson. \u201cI\u2019m optimistic that early moisture indicators paint a positive picture for the 2026 growing season.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

You can see the full Water Supply Outlook here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The majority of mountain snowpack sites surveyed reported higher or much higher than typical levels. Mountain runoffs are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487056,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-487055","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}