Nebraska Soil Moisture Index Map - May 31, 2010

The High Plains Regional Climate Center is now featuring a weekly Nebraska Soil Moisture Index map.  For the next month or two, the HPRCC will feature a weekly Nebraska soil moisture report and map on the front page of the website, before moving it to a permanent location on the AWDN Soil Moisture page.  If you have any comments or questions about the SMI, please use the contact us page.

"The Soil Moisture Index (SMI) is an index applied to the volumetric water content at the depths of 10, 25, and 50 cm. It is averaged over those three depths and scaled such that 5.0 represents field capacity and -5.0 represents the wilting point.  Measurements are made under grass covered, rain fed conditions and may not be representative of soil moisture conditions in fields with standard row crops."  To learn more about the SMI, click here.

Nebraska Weekly Soil Moisture Report - May 24, 2010 

Thunderstorms that occurred this past weekend over much of north-central Nebraska gave the region very moist soil profiles. Rain was quite welcome at Elgin where the SMI went above 0.0 for the first time since the 4^th of May and at O’Neill, where the SMI went from -0.5 to 4.5 with this weekend’s precipitation. Unfortunately, other needy areas were not as lucky. The rain that did fall at Ord and Concord was not enough to even moisten the soil profile at 10 cm and West Point received no precipitation over the weekend. Elsewhere across the state, weekend rainfall has kept the soil profiles sufficiently moist across much of south-central Nebraska, the Panhandle is still moist from the wet spring, east-central/southeast Nebraska are still moist, and the western edge of the Sand Hills continue to slowly dry out.