Evaporation might be a big influence.Just a thought..... one I've been thinking for a while, but probably talking nonsense.
What effect does atmospheric pressure have on infiltration?
Take this past week, we had 5 days of foggy dank wet days, but over those 5 days we didn't actually have much rainful.
By day 5, even on a normally reasonably free draining farm, the quad was marking the ground quite badly.
I carry a small spade on the bike so dung some holes and the water was just sitting in the top 2/3", completely sopping!
The soil below was damp and there was nothing obvious to stop the water moving down.
Roll on day 6 and we get 31mm of heavy rain in about 12hrs, of course we see some fair run off.
The rain is followed by a high and clear skys.
Now after that amount of rain, surely we should be marking the fields worse then ever??
But come the next morning (yesterday) the previously sopping wet 2/3" of top soil has disappeared and the profile is equally damp through the profile and I'm marking the ground less than any point in the last week