Home Gardeners Highly Concerned about
MINNEAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Home gardener concerns about droughts and watering bans remain high as heat domes happen throughout the nation this summer. Despite these concerns, many homeowners say they are largely unaware of water-saving products for their lawns and gardens, according to a new study from Axiom.
'Concerns about keeping lawns and garden plants alive are high,' says Mike Reiber, CEO of Axiom, a Minneapolis-based market research firm that measures consumer attitudes on home and garden topics. 'Home gardeners are keenly interested in identifying solutions during summer droughts and watering bans.'
Key findings in the newly released 2025 report include:
2 of 3 respondents are concerned about their lawns and garden plants being damaged or dying during droughts and watering bans.
4 in 5 respondents are highly interested in products that can reduce the amount of water they need to apply on their lawns and gardens.
6 in 10 respondents are unaware of lawn and garden products that will reduce the amount of water they need to apply to their lawns and gardens.
A recent turf study completed by the University of California Riverside shows how a new generation of soil wetting agents formulated for home gardeners can help save water. The study led by Dr. James Baird evaluated the effectiveness of turf care products for maintaining or improving the quality of bermuda grass under deficit irrigation conditions. In the test, Baird and his team reduced the amount of water used to irrigate test plots by 20% and 40% of the normal irrigation needed throughout the months of July, August, September and October. Throughout this period, Baird's team assessed visual turf quality on a 9-point scale as well as turf color and turf density.
Baird's most recent test included two different formulations of new residential soil wetting agent now available to homeowners. Results demonstrated significantly higher turf quality, color and density when compared to untreated bermuda grass under 20-40% irrigation reduction. Because of this, Baird believes these formulations can potentially save up to 40% of the water normally used to irrigate turf depending on the desired level of quality and playability.
The formulations were developed by Aqua-Drive Residential, a subsidiary of Utah-based Diamond K Gypsum which makes agricultural soil amendment products. 'Soil wetting agents are widely used in agriculture and sports turf to increase water penetration and distribution in the soil,' says Mason Allred, Aqua-Drive marketing manager. 'We've formulated Aqua-Drive Residential specifically for lawns and gardens.' According to Allred, Aqua-Drive products are now available at: Amazon.com, Walmart.com and IFA Country Stores.
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San Francisco Chronicle
9 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
An ancient village in the Himalayas ran out of water. Then, it moved and started over
SAMJUNG, Nepal (AP) — The Himalayan village of Samjung did not die in a day. Perched in a wind-carved valley in Nepal's Upper Mustang, more than 13,000 feet (3,962 meters) above sea level, the Buddhist village lived by slow, deliberate rhythms — herding yaks and sheep and harvesting barley under sheer ochre cliffs honeycombed with 'sky caves' — 2,000-year-old chambers used for ancestral burials, meditation and shelter. Then the water dried up. Snow-capped mountains turned brown and barren as, year after year, snowfall declined. Springs and canals vanished and when it did rain, the water came all at once, flooding fields and melting away the mud homes. Families left one by one, leaving the skeletal remains of a community transformed by climate change: crumbling mud homes, cracked terraces and unkempt shrines. A changing climate The Hindu Kush and Himalayan mountain regions — stretching from Afghanistan to Myanmar — hold more ice than anywhere else outside the Arctic and Antarctic. Their glaciers feed major rivers that support 240 million people in the mountains — and 1.65 billion more downstream. Such high-altitude areas are warming faster than lowlands. Glaciers are retreating and permafrost areas are thawing as snowfall becomes scarcer and more erratic, according to the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development or ICMOD. Kunga Gurung is among many in the high Himalayas already living through the irreversible effects of climate change. 'We moved because there was no water. We need water to drink and to farm. But there is none there. Three streams, and all three dried up,' said Gurung, 54. Climate change is quietly reshaping where people can live and work by disrupting farming, water access, and weather patterns, said Neil Adger, a professor of human geography at the University of Exeter. In places like Mustang, that's making life harder, even if people don't always say climate change is why they moved. 'On the everyday basis, the changing weather patterns ... it's actually affecting the ability of people to live in particular places,' Adger said. Communities forced to move Around the globe, extreme weather due to climate change is forcing communities to move, whether it's powerful tropical storms in The Philippines and Honduras, drought in Somalia or forest fires in California. In the world's highest mountains, Samjung isn't the only community to have to start over, said Amina Maharjan, a migration specialist at ICMOD. Some villages move only short distances, but inevitably the key driver is lack of water. "The water scarcity is getting chronic,' she said. Retreating glaciers — rivers of ice shrinking back as the world warms — are the most tangible and direct evidence of climate change. Up to 80% of the glacier volume in the Hindu Kush and Himalayas could vanish in this century if greenhouse gas emissions aren't drastically cut, a 2023 report warned. It hasn't snowed in Upper Mustang for nearly three years, a dire blow for those living and farming in high-altitude villages. Snowfall traditionally sets the seasonal calendar, determining when crops of barley, buckwheat, and potatoes are planted and affecting the health of grazing livestock. 'It is critically important," Maharjan said. For Samjung, the drought and mounting losses began around the turn of the century. Traditional mud homes built for a dry, cold mountain climate fell apart as monsoon rains grew more intense — a shift scientists link to climate change. The region's steep slopes and narrow valleys funnel water into flash floods that destroyed homes and farmland, triggering a wave of migration that began a decade ago. Finding a place for a new village Moving a village — even one with fewer than 100 residents like Samjung — was no simple endeavor. They needed reliable access to water and nearby communities for support during disasters. Relocating closer to winding mountain roads would allow villagers to market their crops and benefit from growing tourism. Eventually, the king of Mustang, who still owns large tracts of land in the area nearly two decades after Nepal abolished its monarchy, provided suitable land for a new village. Pemba Gurung, 18, and her sister Toshi Lama Gurung, 22, don't remember much about the move from their old village. But they remember how hard it was to start over. Families spent years gathering materials to build new mud homes with bright tin roofs on the banks of the glacial Kali Gandaki river, nearly 15 kilometers (9 miles) away. They constructed shelters for livestock and canals to bring water to their homes. Only then could they move. Some villagers still herd sheep and yak, but life is a bit different in New Samjung, which is close to Lo Manthang, a medieval walled city cut off from the world until 1992, when foreigners were first allowed to visit. It's a hub for pilgrims and tourists who want to trek in the high mountains and explore its ancient Buddhist culture, so some villagers work in tourism. The sisters Pemba and Toshi are grateful not to have to spend hours fetching water every day. But they miss their old home. 'It is the place of our origin. We wish to go back. But I don't think it will ever be possible,' said Toshi. ___ The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at
Miami Herald
13 hours ago
- Miami Herald
Looming loss of crucial satellite system is latest blow to U.S. hurricane forecasting
Hurricane forecasters are at risk of losing a crucial tool because of military concerns surrounding the cybersecurity of a long-shared satellite system — the latest potential cut to federal weather science programs by the Trump administration. After criticism and questions from a slew of forecasting experts, the Department of Defense on Monday announced that it is postponing the cutoff of the critical satellite imaging for at least a month. Unless that deadline is extended or the military concerns resolved, forecasters would have a less precise picture of storms overnight, potentially leading to delays of six hours or more in forecasts, or even delayed watches and warnings to people in the path of storms, said James Franklin, a former head of the National Hurricane Center. 'There is no substitute for this imagery, and it will affect certain kinds of forecasts from the National Hurricane Center,' said Franklin, who retired from the NHC in 2017. 'This is a big deal.' After a high-level NASA employee intervened, the department announced Monday it was delaying the decommission until July 31, just before the August and September peak of what is expected to be another above-average hurricane season. That may only be a temporary reprieve. The looming loss of the high-tech microwave imaging is only the latest in a series of announced cuts by the Trump administration to hurricane research, including the loss of uncrewed vessels called Saildrones that capture data and Internet-popular video from the eye of the storm. A detailed budget request released Monday also calls for ending the majority of research conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — including the Miami-based Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, home of the Hurricane Research Division. READ MORE: With hurricane season ahead, Trump cuts leave Florida weather offices understaffed Last week, in the latest controversial proposed cut, the Department of Defense announced it would abruptly stop sharing data from its Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, three weather satellites that are co-operated with NOAA due to 'a significant cybersecurity risk.' While Franklin said he has no explanation for what might suddenly concern the military on a system in use for decades, he and other meteorologists would like to see the service maintained through at least the end of hurricane season. 'How serious a cybersecurity threat can it be, then, if you can extend it a month? If you can extend it a month, can you extend it through the peak of hurricane season?' he asked. NOAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Herald, but an agency spokesperson downplayed concerns, telling Michael Lowry of Local10 that the missing satellite is 'a single dataset in a robust suite of hurricane forecasting and modeling tools in the NWS portfolio.' 'NOAA's data sources are fully capable of providing a complete suite of cutting-edge data and models that ensure the gold-standard weather forecasting the American people deserve,' the agency said. 'Sunrise surprise' Meteorologists say these satellites are irreplaceable. No other source of data or tool available gives the same look into the guts of a storm through the clouds at night. The Special Sensor Microwave Imager Sounder, or SSMIS, allows forecasters to keep an eye on major changes to the rain bands surrounding the core of a storm during a dark and cloudy evening. That, Franklin said, gives forecasters clues as to whether a storm is about to get much stronger, much faster, a process known as rapid intensification. Before that system — or without it — forecasters would get a 'sunrise surprise,' he said. They would wake up to a much stronger or different storm than they saw the previous evening — and eight hours closer to making landfall. 'When you lose that, when these SSMIS data go away, and a forecaster is looking for clues that a storm is about to undergo this rapid strengthening process, it may be hours of delay before those clues are apparent from other types of data,' he said. 'You might have known that six, ten hours earlier if you'd had one of these microwave passes.' The satellite data also gives forecasters a chance to watch out for eyewall replacement cycles. A strengthening storm will often form a new eye that envelops or overtakes the original one. In the middle of that process, a storm gets weaker but also grows wider, meaning the impacts spread along a much bigger area. When a storm goes through an eyewall cycle right next to land, like Hurricane Katrina did in 2005, it can have a significant impact on who gets hit and how hard. Former hurricane hunter Andy Hazelton said the satellite also helped scientists about to fly into a storm see what they were up against and prepare for their mission. 'The microwave satellite is a key piece to look under the hood of a storm. It tells us what to expect,' said Hazelton, now an associate scientist with the University of Miami. While hurricane hunter planes are 'the best available tool' for peering inside a storm and seeing changes like these, planes aren't sent out for every storm. So the microwave passes remain the best option for far-off storms, weaker storms or watching a storm in between plane flights, Franklin said. And the loss of that data could be critical, especially for plotting the center of far-flung developing systems. 'Without the microwave imagery, I think some of these initial position estimates could easily be off by 50 or 60 miles or more in some cases,' he said. 'The less well you know the initial state, the more the errors grow in time.' Few possible replacements In its statement, NOAA pointed to another satellite tool that also offers forecasters a view of storms — the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder or ATMS. But hurricane scientists say it lacks the finer details of the military satellite getting taken offline. 'It's like the graphics of a video game from the late '80s compared to the 2010s,' said Hazelton. 'The resolution isn't there.' The satellites are not young, fresh tech. The first one in the program was launched in 1964, and NOAA didn't assume shared responsibility over the technology until 1994. Franklin said he understands that at least one of the three is set to be phased out in September of next year. But there are no immediate plans for a replacement. A new Department of Defense satellite with similar capabilities is set to launch in October, but Franklin said it isn't clear if that data will be available for forecasters. 'The decision to just turn off the data processing when there's still usable life left is somewhat inexplicable,' he said. 'This is truly a self-inflicted wound.' 'Hit after hit' The loss of the crucial satellite comes weeks after NOAA ended its contract with Saildrone, a private company that provided several uncrewed drones that observed hurricanes from the air and sea and fed the data back to scientists. 'Unfortunately, due to the timelines associated with contracting, shipping, and transit, Saildrone is unable to support the Atlantic Hurricane mission this season,' the company said in a statement. 'Our long-standing partnership of innovative collaboration with NOAA continues across many other mission opportunities.' Hazelton, the hurricane researcher, said the information provided by Saildrone was 'more experimental' than the satellite, but still helped inform and improve storm models. 'The more data, the better,' he said. 'It kind of feels like one hit after another with losing these pieces of data.' On Monday, NOAA released a more detailed budget request for the coming year for Congress to approve. While it doesn't differ from the broad strokes of the budget released earlier this year, it offers even more detail on what cuts the agency could see under the new presidential administration. The budget calls for cutting all NOAA research at climate labs and cooperative institutes across the country, including the Miami-based AOML lab and its academic partnership with the University of Miami. Hazelton calls this a massive blow to what has, for decades, been a bipartisan mission: improving hurricane forecasting. The administration said that crucial weather services would be re-organized under the National Weather Service, but it did not provide details. 'The proposal would basically get rid of all NOAA research,' he said. 'Pretty much all of our research and development and modeling would be hit by this, even if on paper they're moved to the National Weather Service.'
Yahoo
17 hours ago
- Yahoo
West Palm Beach taps its emergency groundwater wells as drought continues into rainy season
The most widespread extreme drought since 2011 for Palm Beach County has continued a month into the rainy season despite May's slobbery promise that summer's showers had begun. While May finished with nearly normal rainfall totals, the deficit in West Palm Beach this year is nearly 13 inches below average as measured at Palm Beach International Airport. Since the rainy season began May 15, the rain deficit is 5.1 inches. National Weather Service meteorologists said a westward stretching Bermuda High, which has bullied afternoon sea breeze showers farther inland, combined with a sprinkling of cloud vaporizing Saharan dust has contributed to making this year the fifth-driest and ninth-warmest in 130 years of records. "We've just been dry overall and when we don't get the showers and thunderstorms, with the angle of the sun being really high, it allows everything to heat up," said Miami-based NWS meteorologist Barry Baxter. In West Palm Beach, where the water supply is primarily drawn from lakes and wetlands, the city started pulling water from its emergency groundwater wellfields on April 17 to supplement the supply for the estimated 130,000 residents of West Palm, Palm Beach and South Palm Beach. Clear Lake, which feeds directly into the city's water treatment plant, has developed a crusty sloping beach around its edges as water recedes. City officials said on June 17 the lake was at 10.55 feet above sea level, which is within the normal seasonal range of 9.5 feet to 12.5 feet above sea level. Still, city officials said they are concerned about whether there is enough water in the regional system, which includes water from Lake Okeechobee, to supplement supply until the rainy season steps up its game. "What if we don't get the rain we need?" asked Ryan Rossi, executive director of the South Florida Water Coalition, during a June 5 South Florida Water Management District meeting. "It's not an unusual question to keep asking, it's not unusual for the people of West Palm Beach to ask, and I think they should be asking it." Rainy season officially runs May 15 through Oct. 15 in South Florida. Those dates were set by the NWS Miami office in 2018 as a way to increase awareness of what can be a dangerous time of year with frequent lightning, flooding, occasional tornadoes and severe thunderstorms. Previous to having the permanent dates, the rainy season's start date was determined by looking at atmospheric conditions including dew point temperatures, sea surface temperatures and an established pattern of rainfall typical to the rainy season. Between 60% and 70% of the average annual rainfall in South Florida occurs during the wet season. Hurricane season 2025: New forecast calls for above normal season but questions remain John Mitnik, chief engineer for the South Florida Water Management District, said at the June 5 meeting that district meteorologists believe the rainy season began May 22 this year. Ahead of that, there were six consecutive months of below-normal rainfall over the 16-county region that the district manages from Orlando to the Keys. 'The wet season has started,' Mitnik said June 5. 'Welcome to the wet season.' And it seemed to be the case. In the two weeks following May 22, areas of Miami-Dade County received 5.3 inches of rain, the Florida Keys averaged 3.9 inches, parts of Broward County were at 3.4 inches and coastal Palm Beach County had 2.6 inches. Then the rainfall sputtered. Hurricane Season 2025: When the Internet storm is worse than the real thing The largest Saharan dust outbreak for May in eight years occurred during the last week of the month, according to Michael Lowry, a hurricane expert with South Florida ABC-TV affiliate WPLG-Channel 10. Lowry said a stronger-than-normal Bermuda High could be helping to usher the dust outbreaks toward the Caribbean and Florida. Saharan dust prevents widespread showers from forming by adding a layer of warm dry air to the upper atmosphere that prevents clouds from growing. The U.S. Drought Monitor will release an updated report June 19, but as of June 10, about 75% of Palm Beach County was in moderate or severe drought. Statewide, the panhandle remains drought-free, but the majority of the peninsula is suffering from abnormally dry conditions to pockets of extreme drought in Lee County and Palm Beach County. 'It appears that the start of the wet season is on the drier side of normal, but more importantly the extended dry conditions that preceded it has kept us in a very dry position regionally,' said Tommy Strowd, the Lake Worth Drainage District's executive director. 'While drought conditions have eased somewhat in response to recent rainfall, they still generally persist across the Florida peninsula, particularly South Florida.' More: Palm Beach County gives go-ahead to controversial mining and water project on sugar land Strowd said groundwater levels and water levels in canals are generally in good shape because of the amount of Lake Okeechobee water that was released this year. The district was able to capture that water in its system of canals instead of it being sent to the ocean through the Lake Worth Lagoon, which damages the brackish ecosystem. The releases were part of the new Lake Okeechobee System Operating Manual, which manages when and how much water should be let out of the lake for water supply, the well-being of the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries and the health of the lake itself. On June 18, Lake Okeechobee was 11.18 feet above sea level. That's down from 15.12 feet on Jan. 1 and a level that is allowing nascent recovery of some aquatic plants. The plants are the building block of the lake's ecosystem but die when water levels get too high and block sunlight. "The lake was in horrible shape," said United Water Fowlers Florida President Newton Cook at the June 5 meeting. "What is happening today will help bring it back and get the lake back to doing what it is supposed to do, and that is being the heart of the Everglades." Kimberly Miller is a journalist for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Network of Florida. She covers real estate, weather, and the environment. Subscribe to The Dirt for a weekly real estate roundup. If you have news tips, please send them to kmiller@ Help support our local journalism, subscribe today. This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Drought continues into South Florida's wet season but rain uptick expected
