Frost Depth 19 Inches

We have just come through a stretch of extremely cold temperatures and the extended forecast is calling for more cold weather later on this week. Fortunately it will be no where near as severe as 30 below zero that we saw last week. One of the weather related facts I watch every winter is the frost depth. The easiest way to do that is tracking the weather data at the Southern Research and Outreach Center at Waseca.

On February 1, 2019 the frost depth was 19 inches. In the middle of January the frost depth was about 12 inches. You would have thought the frost penetration would have been more but there was 8 inches of snow on the ground to provide insulation. I also watch the actual temperature of the soil at the 2, 4 and 8 inch depth. Even during the extremely cold temperatures last week the soil temperature at all the depths held at about 20 degrees! This really illustrates just how good an insulator snow is!