Much needed rainfall fell over much of the state on Saturday with some lucky locations receiving upwards of three inches. Some snow was mixed in as well, but we shan't mention such things. Anyway, the featured chart presents soil moisture data from the ISU Soil Moisture station at the ISU Ag Farm west of Ames. The tipping bucket reported just over six tenths of an inch of precipitation which is depicted as an accumulated total by the dashed line. The soil moisture readings at the given depth are shown by the solid lines. The near immediate response at the shallowest depths with soil moisture increasing is obvious with the two inch depth quickly increasing and the four inch depth lagging slightly behind. It is then fascinating to look at the eight inch depth, whose response is muted and lagged by some 6-8 hours. You can see some increase at 12 inches, but the change is very small. Once the rain stopped, you can see how the top layers of soil are already drying back out as moisture seeps deeper.

Voting:
Good = 18
Bad = 1

Tags:   soilmoisture