Ticker for July 29, 1998

                
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July 29, 1998      July 29, 1998      July 29, 1998      July 29, 1998

Soil Temperature Maps

The evolution of today's soil temperatures should be am interesting feature
in Mesonet data today.  With the recent rainfall in the northern and
northwestern counties, afternoon temperatures underneath the rainfall
"footprint" have been much cooler than those soil temperatures at locations
which have received no rainfall.

Where there has been no rain and soil moisture is very low, the sun's
energy is used almost entirely to heat the surface (sensible heat).  Inside
the rainfall footprint, the sun's energy is partitioned into two uses:
sensible heat and latent heat of evaporation (evaporating near-surface
soil moisture).  The net result: lower surface temperatures inside the
rainfall footprint, all other conditions being equal.

Current Mesonet Soil Teperatures (at 5 cm under bare soil) are updated
every 15 minutes at:



One-day, three-day and seven-day average soil temperatures (through midnight
the previous night) for all Mesonet depths and surfaces are updated every
night at the Mesonet AgWeather Current Weather Page:

http://agweather.mesonet.org/weather.html