Can shallow temperature measurements on vertical profiles be used to determine the recharge? As a first approach to answer this question, we consider here the soil temperature data recorded by meteorological stations. A group of annual cycles allows us to determine the average value of vertical water seepage: in the presence of infiltration the apparent diffusivity deduced from the damping of the amplitude of the temperature between two different depths differs from the apparent diffusivity deduced from the temperature phase shift between the same pair of depths, and the average water flow can be easily deduced from this difference. For the determination of recharge over shorter periods of time it would be better to reconsider the sampling step of the data in both time and space domains. These limitations can be overcome by installing specialized vertical temperature profiles. ¿ 1999 American Geophysical Union