On March 22, the federal government announced it would develop such a strategy, calling it “an opportunity to discuss how we can address freshwater-related threats and opportunities,” protect freshwater ecosystems, and secure water for communities and the economy, according to a news release.

The Canada Water Agency, which was repurposed in 2024 as a stand-alone freshwater management agency separate from Environment and Climate Change Canada, will spearhead the strategy’s development.

While the announcement was scant on details of what such a strategy might look like, it said the agency will work with provinces and territories, First Nations, Inuit and Métis partners, “stakeholders across sectors” and the public.

Farmers should be among those consulted, the CFA said in a statement to Glacier FarmMedia.

“Water security is absolutely critical for the future of Canadian farmers. Farmers in different regions of Canada have been devastated by water issues over the past few years, such as the floods in B.C., or the ongoing long-term drought in the Prairie provinces,” a federation spokesperson said.

“A lack of water has severe negative impacts on any type of farm, no matter what they grow or raise.”

Prioritizing food security, agriculture

The strategy should protect farmers and mitigate the effects of water-related events. It should also secure predictable access to water so farmers can maintain food production — for example, through effective water management policies and investment in water infrastructure, CFA said.

“Farmers need to make it clear that food security and agriculture production should be prioritized if there was any issues with access to water.”

“Farmers are also on the front-line of climate change, dealing with the on-ground realities of water-related events,” CFA added. “They have experience and knowledge that will be critical in developing this strategy.”

While the announcement made no specific mention of the agriculture industry, the sector will have an opportunity to share its views during the public engagement process, “recognizing that freshwater is fundamental to our economy, powering industries, agriculture, and the growth of communities,” a federal spokesperson told Glacier FarmMedia.

The federal government has not yet set timelines for consultations, but said those will be announced “in the coming months.”

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From heat that pushed cities to their limits, to fire seasons that refused to end, to water arriving all at once or not at all, the planet delivered a steady stream of reminders about how quickly conditions can shift. What we are going to look at is a broad, worldwide view at some of the major weather themes of 2025.

Tinderbox conditions

Persistent heat was the headline almost everywhere. Long, unbroken stretches of high temperatures settled across Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and parts of North America. It seemed like summer arrived early, stayed late, and left little room for relief.

In several regions, temperatures climbed high enough that energy grids were stressed, and outdoor workers were pushed to their limits. What stood out wasn’t just the intensity of the heat, but how far it reached. Places accustomed to heat struggled just as much as regions that normally expect a break between hot spells. The message was simple: extreme heat is becoming a fixture, not a visitor.

Several major fire zones flared up early, and many burned long past their traditional endpoints. Canada and parts of Europe found themselves once again under thick smoke as sprawling fires worked their way through forests dried out by months of below-average rainfall.

Fire crews often battled a combination of high winds and low humidity, making suppression difficult. Smoke travelled thousands of kilometres, dimming skies far from the fires’ origin. At one point, Americans were getting mad at us for sending smoke their way.

Rain, rain, go away

On the opposite end of the spectrum, several countries had to navigate severe flooding. Monsoon rains in parts of South Asia were stronger than usual, pushing rivers into surrounding farmland and communities. Elsewhere, short-lived but powerful storm systems triggered flash floods that swept through urban corridors and mountain valleys. Some areas spent part of the year in deep drought and later dealt with swollen waterways.

These quick swings highlighted how modern flood risk increasingly depends on short-duration extremes rather than just long seasonal trends.

Tropical cyclone activity in 2025 delivered more intensity than volume. Some basins came in near or even a touch below their usual storm counts, yet the systems that did develop really packed a punch.

In the Atlantic, the season finished with 13 named storms and five hurricanes, and an impressive four of those reached major-hurricane strength. The standout was Hurricane Melissa, a powerful Category 5 that tore across Jamaica late in the season, and was the strongest tropical cyclone anywhere in the world in 2025.

Melting away

Farther north, the Arctic continued down its long-term trajectory of ice loss. Winter’s peak ice coverage set yet another record low, and by the end of summer, the melt season had carved out one of the smallest minimums. With less ice comes warmer water, which means more open ocean for weather systems to draw energy from, this in turn results in subtle but meaningful bends in the jet stream, which eventually impacts our weather in ways we are just trying to figure out.

Northern communities felt the effects of the ice loss firsthand, with eroding shorelines, and shifting wildlife habits.

Human impact

Another issue that impacted the planet was air quality, with smoke, dust, heat and industrial pollution dragging it down. Cities on multiple continents issued repeated advisories, asking residents to limit outdoor activity when possible. Even regions far from wildfire zones experienced haze from distant burns. The growing overlap between heat waves and poor air quality emerged as one of the more troubling health storylines this year.

One of the new sciences that started to get recognized in 2025 was the rapid event-attribution groups. This is a science that analyze major heat and rainfall extremes to determine how much human-driven warming influenced them. Several high-profile studies concluded that some of the year’s worst episodes would have been far less likely in a cooler world. These findings added scientific weight to what many people already sensed: the background climate is shifting, and that shift is shaping the extremes we see.

Wild weather year

Taken together, the weather stories of 2025 paint a picture of a planet adjusting to a new rhythm, one marked by sharper extremes, quicker transitions and narrower margins. Heat waves that would have once been once-in-a-generation events are showing up every few years. Fire seasons behave less like defined “seasons” and more like extended periods of risk. Water arrives suddenly or not at all.

I once used an analogy of a blender. When you turn the blender on, the pattern remains fairly constant until you hit the next power level. Everything then jumps and becomes chaotic, eventually a new different pattern then emerges. I think we are starting to hit the next power level jump, we are seeing the chaotic weather patterns developing.

The question is, how long until a new stable pattern develops, and just what will be that pattern?

While the hope is always for a quieter year ahead, the lessons of 2025 will carry forward: awareness matters, preparation matters, and the stories we track now will help shape how we respond to whatever unfolds next.

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Recovery is under way in the mid-north coast region of Australia’s most populous state after days of flooding cut off towns, swept away livestock and destroyed homes. At least 10,000 properties may have been damaged in the floods, which were sparked by days of incessant rain, authorities estimate.

About 32,000 residents remained isolated due to floodwaters, which were slowly starting to recede, the state’s Emergency Services posted on the X platform.

“The New South Wales government is providing emergency fodder, veterinary care, management advice and aerial support for isolated stock,” state Agriculture Minister Tara Moriarty said in a statement.

It said 43 helicopter drops and around 130 drops by other means had provided “isolated farmers with emergency fodder for their stranded livestock”.

At their peak, the floods isolated around 50,000 people, submerging intersections and street signs in mid-north coast towns and covering cars up to their windshields, after fast-rising waters burst river banks.

Five deaths have been linked to the floods, the latest a man in his 80s whose body was found at a flooded property about 50 km (30 miles) from Taree, one of the worst-hit towns, police said. Taree sits along the Manning River more than 300 km (190 miles) north of state capital Sydney.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Saturday that conditions remained critical in flood-affected regions of New South Wales, as clean-up efforts began.

Australia has been hit with increasing extreme weather events that some experts say are the result of climate change. After droughts and devastating bushfires at the end of last decade, frequent floods have wreaked havoc since early 2021.

— Reporting by Sam McKeith in Sydney

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The two-year study looked at 31 different soybean varieties, including some bred to be flood tolerant or moderately flood tolerant, and more susceptible varieties. Researchers examined the effects of four days of partial submergence on soybeans in the R1 or early flowering stage.

“Flooding research has focused on the early reproductive stage simply because it is when the stress is most pronounced and causes the greatest yield loss,” said researcher Caio Vieira in a Feb. 3 news release.

The most flood-tolerant varieties lost about 33 per cent of yield after being flooded, while the most susceptible plants lost just over half of their yield potential. However, no significant impacts on seed protein or oil content were observed across the different varieties.

Viera said temperature changes in the U.S. have allowed earlier soybean planting, while shifting rain patterns have put additional stress on soy plants.

“We’re pretty much getting the potential for flooding throughout the season. It’s been tougher,” he said.

Arkansas farmers typically plant soy from early April to mid-Mary, putting the R1 stage in late June or early July.

“It can be hit or miss,” Vieira said. “You can get a year where that period is a full-on drought, or you can get a year where that typical R1 period is completely wet with intensive rains. It’s hard, hard to predict.”

Arkansas can also see the remnants of hurricanes roll through. This happened twice in September, the news release noted.

Vieira said the study will help his team identify and incorporate flood-tolerant characteristics into future soybean genetics.

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This weather system occurs all over the world. It starts when a large amount of water vapor from tropical oceans is carried by a jet stream toward land. As the air rises, it cools and condenses, resulting in rain or snow. They most commonly form in mid-latitude oceans, roughly 30 and 60 degrees north and south, according to NASA. They appear as a trail of wispy clouds that can stretch for hundreds of miles.

Atmospheric rivers can carry up to 15 times the volume of the Mississippi River, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Most atmospheric rivers are weak and do not cause damage. They can provide much-needed rain or snow.

Sometimes they do both. In drought-stricken California, such storms have triggered mudslides, toppled utility poles and blocked roadways, but also helped replenish depleted reservoirs and reduced the risk of wildfires by saturating the state’s parched vegetation.

In 2019, an atmospheric river nicknamed the “Pineapple Express” hit California. The water vapor from near Hawaii brought rain and triggered mudslides that forced motorists to swim for their lives and sent homes sliding downhill.

In 2021, an atmospheric river dumped a month’s worth of rain on British Columbia in two days, prompting deadly floods and landslides, devastating communities and severing access to Canada’s largest port.

According to scientists, atmospheric rivers of the kind that drenched California and flooded British Columbia in recent years will become larger—and possibly more destructive—because of climate change. There are projected to be 10 per cent fewer atmospheric rivers in the future, but they are expected to be 25 per cent wider and longer and carry more water, according to a 2018 research paper.

This could make managing water supply much harder as moderate atmospheric rivers, which can be beneficial for water supplies, will be less frequent, and strong ones could become more calamitous.

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Rebecca Schulz, minister of environment and protected areas, said it has never been more important to improve the resiliency of Alberta’s watersheds.

“By working with local communities and partners, we are helping mitigate the impact of future floods and droughts in communities across the province while creating healthier water bodies for future generations,” she said.

The money will fund eight community groups to carry out projects like offsite watering and fencing in riparian areas.

Jim Fisher, vice-president of Canadian policy with Delta Waterfowl, is pleased with the announcement.

“This money goes to communities, but also to watersheds and counties and municipal districts,” said Fisher, who spent 2009 to 2016 working with ALUS, which was formed by Delta Waterfowl, an international group interested in watershed maintenance and how it influences healthy duck populations.

“There’s always challenges. If you look at the environment, there are always things that could be done to improve it. With agriculture comes challenges. We reduced a lot of the grasslands and growing more economic crops. That’s great for the economy, but a challenge for the environment,” he said.

“When you look at challenges within watersheds, it ebbs and flows.”

Right now, water quantity is low after several years of drought.

“On the quantity side, supports for projects like this can help build some resiliency into the systems,” Fisher said.

But there’s also the water quality side of the equation, such as excess phosphorus and nitrates, sometimes from crop fertilization.

“Those nutrients can end up in water bodies and cause problems like blue green algae in lakes that are poisonous for a long time,” he said.

Healthy watersheds can benefit biodiversity.

“Alberta is one of the most important jurisdictions on the continent for where ducks breed,” said Fisher.

Groundwater is associated with the wetlands.

“Wetlands will help keep the water on the land for a longer period and would recharge the groundwater systems and aquifers. That’s beneficial for all local farming and society in general.”

Better water management can also lead to better agricultural resiliency.

“Floods and droughts are part of natural cycles, but that doesn’t make them any easier to cope with,” said Christine Campbell, senior western hub manager of ALUS. She said it can be hard for farmers and ranchers to deal with these cycles.

“They can handle a dry year or two but when it’s stretching to three or four years in a row, many of the backup plans have been exhausted and soil water reserves depleted,” she said.

In some basins, like the closed Bow River basin, water restrictions will be part of daily life for everyone.

“Farmers and ranchers who rely on natural sources of water for their livestock and crops might just be left without many options this year.”

ALUS is a community-developed, farmer-delivered program that helps farmers and ranchers design resiliency into their operation by supporting nature-based solutions, said Campbell.

“These nature-based solutions allow the farmer or rancher to actively produce ecosystems services on their land, alongside traditional crops and livestock.”

This provides better soil health, more water-holding capacity, and more functional wetlands.

This type of program is in place through the Tributaries to Resilience Project, which is active in 20 municipalities.

The programs can include everything from wildlife habitat and biodiversity to carbon sequestration.

ALUS’s Tributaries to Resiliency program is designed to help tributaries and their surrounding landscapes become resilient to extreme weather and climate events. Multi-year droughts are a prime example.

Government funding is critical to the work, Campbell said.

“Demand for ALUS has grown greatly over the past decade or so, both from farmers looking for on the ground solutions to real and pressing problems like drought, but also from municipalities who realize producers hold the key to landscape level solutions,” she said. “More and more, we as a society are recognizing that those people doing those great things deserve to be rewarded for taking actions that benefit their communities.”

Shannon Frank, executive director of the Oldman Watershed Council, said a severe multi-year drought is occurring.

“The latest numbers from our government said that we have 37 per cent of the average stream flow, which is very low, and our snowpack is very low as well,” she said.

“We’re working collaboratively with the government of Alberta to prepare for a drought this spring. We’re expecting it will continue. We’ve seen a lot of producers struggling with dried out dugouts.”

The Oldman watershed contains many tributaries. It covers a big chunk of southwestern Alberta, from about High River in the north to Grassy Lake in the east where the Oldman River joins the Bow River. Some of the Oldman watershed is in the United States. The whole watershed is about 20,000 square kilometres.

“We work with quite a few ranchers and farmers directly on projects on their land. We know one of the best solutions to flood and drought resilience is our natural infrastructure,” Frank said.

This can include river valleys, waterways, wetlands, grasslands and trees, which protect people and the environment from severe weather events.

Creeks and other waterbodies without nearby trees have a higher risk of drying out.

The Oldman Watershed Council helps farmers and ranchers with projects, including replanting vegetation, building fencing to protect watersheds, or putting in troughs to water cattle away from the stream.

“We help naturalized wetlands, replant a lot of vegetation and just try to keep that natural infrastructure as healthy as possible because it is providing those protective services,” said Frank.

“The grant is going to help us do a lot of that restoration work. It’s also going to help with education.”

The council plans workshops to help producers, municipalities and First Nations manage through drought.

It is compiling water resources and information on a new website, abwater.ca.

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The province’s Water Security Agency (WSA) said Friday its $1 million cost-share rebate program will expand its eligibility beyond RMs, conservation and development area (C+D) authorities and watershed associations to also include landowners and small urban (under 5,000 people) municipalities.

The program provides a 50 per cent rebate of eligible costs, up to a maximum $100,000 per application/applicant, for activities in the 2023-24 program year.

Eligible work can include removing silt, sediment, beaver dams and/or debris such as trees, brush and deadfall. The work is meant to reduce risk of blockages that can cause flooding on roadways and farmland, whether on approved drainage projects or natural watercourses.

Eligible projects can’t involve altering, replacing or repairing existing structures such as culverts or approaches. Other than sediment removal, projects also mustn’t involve new earthwork of any kind, such as digging new ditches or deepening, widening or otherwise reshaping a natural watercourse.

In clearing natural channels, volumes of water released “must not be so significant as to result in damage to downstream lands.” A project proponent also must have consent from owners of land next to the natural watercourse before starting the work.

Eligible applicants are also responsible for gathering “all necessary approvals, licences or authorizations required under municipal, provincial or federal legislation” and approvals from any affected landowners for access to a work site.

The application deadline for this program year is Jan. 31, 2024; the program will only cover eligible costs incurred between April 1, 2023 and Jan. 31, 2024.

“Preserving unobstructed waterways and proactively managing potential flooding and erosion concerns play a critical role in safeguarding the well-being of every individual residing in Saskatchewan,” Jeremy Cockrill, the provincial minister responsible for the WSA, said Friday in a release.

WSA said it also “streamlined” the rebate program this year by “eliminating unnecessary steps” in the application process. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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That’s the assessment from Drew Lerner, president and senior agricultural meteorologist at World Weather Inc. at Overland Park, Kansas.

While the western half of the Canadian Prairies will remain in a drought, Lerner said that isn’t the case for the eastern half of the region. The outlook for that portion of the Prairies called for improved rains in the summer, he said.

“May has always stood out being an anomalously drier month and it’s verifying that very well,” Lerner said, adding he’s quite encouraged by the prospects for rain during the balance of the month.

As for large portions of Alberta and west-central Saskatchewan, the meteorologist noted he doesn’t see an end to drought anytime soon. “It’s going to take a while for it to go away.”

As for the U.S. northern Plains, significant portions of North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota were having a difficult time drying out this spring. He said excessive snowfall led to flooding in a number of areas — but not as bad as expected due to a lack of frost in the ground, which helped to absorb excess moisture.

“But they got rain over the weekend and they will get more rain coming up this week. So that will obviously further prolong the drying that is so badly needed,” Lerner said, estimating planting in the area should start during the third week of May.

The story for the southern Plains, which remains mired in a severe drought, could improve a little, he said.

“There’s going to be a wetter scenario playing out a little bit later this week,” as he forecast scattered showers and thunderstorms.

Lerner pointed to Oklahoma and Texas at likely to get the best rains. Meanwhile Kansas, Colorado and perhaps a part of Nebraska should see some precipitation in coming days.

— Glen Hallick reports for MarketsFarm from Winnipeg.

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By Friday, more than 13,000 people were under evacuation orders in Alberta. As of late Friday afternoon, 91 fires were considered active, of which 27 were deemed out of control and 18 classified as “being held.”

Among the worst-hit areas was the territory of the Little Red River Cree Nation, which comprises three communities in the north of the province, where the 1,458-hectare (3609-acre) Fox Lake fire consumed 20 homes and the police station.

The entire 7,000-strong population of Drayton Valley, 140 km west of Edmonton, was also ordered to evacuate late Thursday night, followed by Edson, a town of about 8,100 people about 140 km northwest of Drayton Valley, on Friday evening. Evacuations were also expanding in surrounding Brazeau and Yellowhead counties.

Parts of the counties of Strathcona, Leduc, Athabasca, Parkland and Grande Prairie were also under mandatory evacuation orders Friday evening, as were communities including Fox Lake, Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation and Entwistle.

Alberta has imposed a ban on open burning, including backyard fire pits, across the entire province. Recreational use of off-highway vehicles on public land, including designated OHV trails, is also now prohibited.

MORE READING: Farm checklist against fire

Pembina Pipeline Corp., which operates oil pipelines in the region, said it has activated emergency response and incident management processes and is “evaluating any current or anticipated operational impacts.”

There were no reported impacts on oil and gas producers, although the province said Friday that oil and gas facilities were among the evacuations Thursday night from a wildfire area southeast of Edson.

There have been 363 wildfires in Alberta so far this year and more than 43,000 hectares burned, the province reported Friday. At the same date in 2022, 175 fires had been reported with almost 414 hectares burned.

“This is significantly more wildfire activity for this time of year than we have seen any time in the recent past,” Christie Tucker, an information unit manager for Alberta Wildfire, told a press conference, adding fires were expected to intensify Friday.

“It’s going to get hotter, it’s going to get windier and we are expecting some extreme wildfire behaviour. Firefighters are at the ready today for what could be an extremely challenging day,” she said.

As of Friday evening in neighbouring Saskatchewan, 16 wildfires were considered active, with eight deemed “not contained,” out of 77 so far this year, almost double the five-year average. As of Friday morning, the province’s fire weather index, a risk gauge for potential fire intensity, mapped out most of agricultural Saskatchewan as “extreme.”

Its biggest active fire, at about 5,000 hectares as of Friday morning, is around First Nations communities near Jackfish Lake, about 40 km north of North Battleford in the province’s northwest.

In British Columbia, rivers burst their banks, washing through homes and forcing highway closures in numerous communities across the province’s interior, including Cache Creek and Grand Forks.

Until last week Western Canada had been enduring a cold spring but a rapid onset of unseasonably high temperatures, in places 10 to 15 C above the average for early May, is causing both fires and flooding.

With heavy rain in the forecast, the British Columbia government urged communities to be prepared for more flooding over the weekend.

“Warm temperatures in the Interior have accelerated snowmelt and caused increased pressure on rivers and creeks,” the provincial ministry of emergency management said in a statement.

“The situation is expected to worsen as rainfall and thundershowers are forecast for Friday, May 5, and Saturday, May 6, which increases the likelihood of flooding.”

— Reporting for Reuters by Nia Williams. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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The nine consecutive rainstorms that inundated California in succession since Dec. 26 killed at least 20 people while tens of thousands remained under evacuation orders as of Monday, Governor Gavin Newsom said in an executive order that reinforced the state’s response to storm damage.

“The last of the heavier rain in California is slowly fading. After midnight it shouldn’t be heavy anymore,” said meteorologist David Roth of the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center.

Biden will travel to areas of the central coast on Thursday to meet first responders, visit affected towns, and “assess what additional federal support is needed,” the White House said.

The president had already issued an emergency declaration on Jan. 8 to free up federal aid and then on Saturday authorized disaster assistance for Merced, Sacramento and Santa Cruz counties.

The White House has yet to reveal the areas Biden will visit.

Among the more dramatic images of storm damage were those of Highway 1, the scenic coastal highway near Big Sur, which was closed at several points due to mudslides and falling boulders strewn across the road.

Water supplies still limited

While damaging, the storms also helped mitigate a historic drought, as much of the state has already received half or more its average annual rainfall.

But with more than two months to go in the rainy season, officials are urging Californians to continue conserving water. The U.S. Drought Monitor still shows almost the entire state under moderate or severe drought conditions. Reservoir levels were still below average for this time of year, officials said.

Moreover, the atmospheric rivers largely failed to reach the Colorado River basin, a critical source of southern California’s water.

“If you rely on the Colorado River basin as a part of your water supply, then there will be continuing drought problems due to the extreme drought in that part of the world,” Michael Anderson, California’s state climatologist, told reporters.

The Colorado’s two major reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, were at 28.5 and 22.6 per cent of capacity, respectively, and still below levels from this time a year ago according to Water-Data.com.

The ninth consecutive atmospheric river fizzled out on Monday, its remnants soaking the southernmost part of the state, Arizona and northern Mexico, Roth said.

The storms are akin to rivers in the sky that carry moisture from the Earth’s tropics to higher latitudes, dumping massive amounts of rain.

Another storm was coming that could bring moderate rain on Tuesday and Wednesday. The U.S. National Weather Service said it lacked the volume to be classified as an atmospheric river, while the state Department of Water Resources said it may briefly qualify as one.

California can otherwise expect dry conditions for the remainder of January, state officials said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Daniel Trotta in Carlsbad, Calif., and Rich McKay in Atlanta.

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