The immediate post-harvest weather forecast for Southern Saskatchewan is much like most of the last few months… warm and dry.

Skies are clear and high temps are in the high teens Monday and Tuesday thanks to an upper ridge of high pressure that’s been parked in the province for the better part of a month.

But Meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada Terri Lang said that changes in the middle of the week.

“Well certainly into early next week, we are looking… midweek looks like there’s a weather system that wants to move across southern and Central Saskatchewan, and looks like it will bring a bit more rain,” Lang said.

That rain will be important for soil moisture, and helpful that it’s before the ground freezes for the winter.

“Any moisture, I think would be welcome, and so the temperatures will moderate accordingly, but it does look like that upper ridge will build back in behind that system,” Lang said.

Long term, an El Nino pattern has developed in the Pacific Ocean, and typically the pattern in the past has led to warm, dry winters here on the prairies.

“That’s the pattern, it doesn’t necessarily mean it would be, but the correlation with those conditions and the stronger El Ninos is that – warmer and dryer than average,” Lang said.