IEM Daily Feature
Tuesday, 01 April 2008

Saturated

Posted: 01 Apr 2008 07:11 AM

The featured graph is of soil moisture readings from the Ames SCAN site. Values around 40% indicate saturation, which is roughly how much air space there is in our soil (replaced with water when saturated). With only an inch or so of rainfall yesterday, the soil quickly saturated. This is a bad sign for spring as heavy rainfall will produce excessive runoff, since the soil is already "full". It will also take a considerable stretch of warmer and drier weather before field work can begin.

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