IEM Daily Bulletin for Jan 29 2026

[daryl herzmann]

Iowa Environmental Mesonet Daily Bulletin for 29 January 2026

News

No news is good news

IEM Code Pushes <repo,branch> on Github

Timestamp	Repository	Message	Link
Jan 28 11:32 AM	iem,main	🎨 Prevent ISUSM from roundtripping HADS	Link
Jan 28 10:50 PM	iem,main	💚 Improve webservice call robustness	Link

Daily Feature

Responsive Frozen Soil
Date: 28 Jan 05:30 AM
Votes: Good: 14   Bad: 0 Abstain: 0

The lack of snow cover along with very cold air temperatures over the past few weeks creates an interesting soil temperature environment to observe! The featured chart presents hourly soil temperatures at nine depths from an ISU Soil Moisture station near Ames since the 10th of January. It is important to note that the observing sensor is not below a patch of bare ground, but grass associated with an edge of agricultural field. So even with air temperatures well below 0°F over the past few days, the two inch depth soil temperature only dipped into the upper teens thanks to the ground cover. The warm-up shown early on in the chart was associated with a brief period of near 50°F air temperatures with the decaying and delayed thermal response with depth nicely shown. Colder air temperatures dominated after this period with the cooling trend shown at all levels. While the past number of days have seen air temperatures well below the shown two inch depth soil temperatures, there has also been ample sunshine, which has helped to stabilize temperatures. It is certainly interesting to see the frozen soil still respond daily to solar input while still remaining frozen. The frost depth has increased with the 16 inch depth sensor now indicated below freezing. For locations with bare ground and no snow cover, the frost depth has likely increased significantly over the past few days and this would be of concern with continued cold temperatures without snow, that the frost depth would start reaching depths to cause infrastructure issues like pipe freezing/bursts.

The featured media can be generated on-demand here

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NWS Watch/Warning Summary for 12 AM 28 Jan 2026 - 12 AM 29 Jan 2026 CST

	Summary		By WFO					Watches
Type	US	IA	ARX	DVN	DMX	OAX	FSD	US
Tornado	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Svr Tstorm	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Flash Flood	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	---

ARX = LaCrosse, WI DVN = Davenport, IA DMX = Des Moines, IA OAX = Omaha, NE FSD = Sioux Falls, SD

IEM Cow Report

No SVR+TOR Warnings Issued.