Weekly Nebraska Soil Moisture Report - August 8, 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 - August 8, 2011 

Drier soil profiles prevail across most of the state, although much of this is indicative of the dry weather in previous weeks as recent rain has helped the top half foot of the soil profile at many locations. The western Sandhills region was the recipient of abundant rainfall in the past week and this is reflected in the moist conditions reported at Gudmundsens, Arapahoe Prairie, and Arthur. Holdrege and Smithfield also posted nice recoveries in their soil profiles with rain that fell in the past 4-5 days. Significant rainfall is a good bet for most of the western 2/3 of the state and most places in Nebraska should receive some rain over the next week. The combination of rain and seasonally cool temperatures in the upcoming week should allow for improvement or maintaining the status quo across most of the state, which is about as good as it can get in the middle of August in Nebraska.