Soil Moisture

It has been said that Eastern Oklahoma is never more than two weeks away from being in a drought. That is a bit of an exaggeration, but it does illustrate the point that our heavy clay soils are also

Saturday, July 28th 2007, 7:02 am

By: News On 6

It has been said that Eastern Oklahoma is never more than two weeks away from being in a drought. That is a bit of an exaggeration, but it does illustrate the point that our heavy clay soils are also rocky and shallow and two weeks without rain can dry and crack the ground rather quickly. That point was brought home to me as I have been building a deck behind my house and in setting the posts I was surprised at how quickly the surface has dried and hardened. The deeper I went, the more moisture I found which is certainly no surprise. I thought perhaps a knowledge of the depth of soil moisture might be of benefit to some of you and there is a web site that provides just that sort of information. Here in Oklahoma, we are blessed to have what is probably the finest weather reporting system to be found anywhere in the world in the Oklahoma mesonet. This is maintained by the Oklahoma Climate Survey and they provide all sorts of information. To get the soil moisture, here is what you need to do: from KOTV.com, open weather, open tools, open soil temps and click on the "open current maps". From there you will notice a checkbox in the upper left which has "current maps". Click on the check box and select "interactive products" and from there you will find soil moisture conditions at several different levels all across Oklahoma. Pretty neat.

Dick