Back in the early 80's, the NRCS came out to do a water infiltration study on my farm that had been in notil for about 5 years. This was a Crosby silt loam soil. The corn was about 8 inches tall and it had been fairly dry. They went to a neighbor's farm and did the same infiltration test and the same soil type. He was a conventional plow and plant tillage system, did not get on the ground too wet, and plowed with an IH 656. They used a graduated cylinder that was 36 inches tall and about 1.5 inches in diameter. They filled it with water and timed how long it took for the water to soak into the soil.

They then came to my farm using the same techniques and filled the cylinder 2 times with water and released it at the same location. It soaked in so fast they could not measure how fast the water infiltrated into the soil. The third time the water infiltrated slow enough that the  NRCS was able to able to get a time on how fast the water infiltrated the soil. I did not fully understand the reasons the water infiltrated so much faster at the time.

I have noticed in later years with heavy rainfall how much less water is on top of the soil in my long term notil during the heavy rain compared to conventional tillage neighbors on same soil types with similar  soil drainage.  Jim