The recent rainfall is certainly very welcome as deficits from the early fall season are being erased. Sometimes big rainfall events can come too quickly and water is "lost" (with respect to soil moisture) to runoff. So it is a good time to check in on soil moisture observations from the ISU Soil Moisture Network. The featured chart presents daily soil moisture observations at a twelve inch depth. This year's value is plotted along with the period of record climatology. The chart is a bit noisy due to having just 12 years of data, but tells a good story of the 2024 year. We came into this growing season with good soil moisture reserves and timely rains throughout much of the season kept levels above average. The drying that occurred during October has quickly been reversed with current values above the 75th percentile.

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