IEM Daily Feature
Thursday, 06 April 2017

Solar Struggles

Posted: 06 Apr 2017 05:36 AM

Hope springs eternal that our recent extended stretch of gloomy and cloudy weather will break for a few days with a triumphant return of full sunshine starting today. The featured chart displays recent daily solar radiation totals from the Ames ISU Soil Moisture Network station. The daily bars represent the energy received from the sun and the line represents a theoretical maximum assuming low humidities and clear skies. You can see that recently, we have been nowhere near theoretical maxes. The implication is that soil temperatures have not done much recently either with the limited solar inputs. With the recent rains, a few days of warm temperatures and sunshine will help green our landscape up even further!

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