Weekly Nebraska Soil Moisture Report - April 25, 2011

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 - April 25, 2011 

Another week of cool temperatures and precipitation allowed for further improvement at many locations and the statewide median SMI is now up to 3.1 (up from 0.8 two weeks ago). As of today, there are only three sites in the state with an SMI below 0.0 (Sidney, Cedar Point, and Cozad) and precipitation this week will hopefully be enough to bring them above 0.0. Most of the heavy corn/soybean region of the state has well over an inch remaining in the top 50 cm of soil before the fraction of available goes below 50%, so our earlier fear of crops needing irrigation after planting will not come to fruition for most producers. At this point, a spell of warmer, drier weather would be welcome. Wonder how many more times this season that statement can be made?