Weekly Nebraska Soil Moisture Report - June 6, 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 - June 6, 2011 

A week of dry and warm weather was the rule for most of the state this past week and this was evident by the reduction in soil moisture. The period of every site in the state having an SMI above 0.0 lasted about a week as Ord and Elgin have now dipped below that. The south-central and northeast regions of Nebraska remained quite moist with SMI’s generally above 3.0 and over an inch of water left in the profile before falling below the magic 50% of available water mark. Most of the state will be quite warm early in the week, allowing for more rapid depletion of the soil profile. Some sites in the eastern corner of the state have the possibility of receiving significant rainfall this week, but most sites in the state will likely see further drying.