Rain Gage Reports

This was a perfect spring rain of around one inch with some rain gage reports called in of 1.5 inches. It was also nice to see it come slowly over a number of hours. When the frost is coming out of the ground in the spring, I don't know why, but a little rain sure seems to firm the ground up and allow it to dry better? The rain was great too because precipitation over the winter was about one inch below normal. It is always nice to go into the planting season with the subsoil at about maximum water holding capacity.

There was 11 inches of frost in the ground on March 8, 2021 at the Southern Research and Outreach Center at Waseca. Another reading was taken four days later on March 12, 2021 and there was no frost left in the ground! Soil temperatures are warming up with maximum temperatures of 47 degrees and minimum of 36 degrees at the two inch depth. Even at the 8 inch depth the maximum was 40 degrees and the minimum of 36 degrees.

Now all we need is warm sunshine and maybe we will get an early start to spring fieldwork and planting? Maybe it can be a repeat of last spring which was about as "perfect" as a farmer could hope for!