
In the southern Arizona city of Tucson, which has already seen some monsoon activity, the outdoor living Sonoran Desert Museum isn't running into the same problems with its succulents, McCue said. The last two seasons were impressive, and the two before that largely duds. And even when it does, the moisture isn't shared equally across the Four Corners region and beyond. It carries a promise of rain but doesn't always deliver.

It can be a mixed bag - cooling sweltering cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix but bringing the risk of flooding to mountain towns and low-lying deserts alike. In Arizona, about half the rain that falls during the year comes during the monsoon. It sets up differently in other parts of the world. monsoon is characterized by a shift in wind patterns that pull moisture in from the tropical coast of Mexico. There is hope that the arrival of thunderstorms during the monsoon season, which traditionally starts June 15, could bring more delayed moisture that will help struggling flora. Eventually, the entire plant might fall over from the stress." "The first sign of heat-related stress in a population are arms falling from large plants. "Larger (and older) plants have more arms and thus, they tend to be the first to start to lose structural integrity," Hultine said via email.
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The information you need to know, sent directly to you: Download the CTV News AppĪ cactus' size can also influence its susceptibility, said Kevin Hultine, the garden's director of research, and bigger plants with more mass are more prone to the effects of heat and drought."With water loss, if they become dehydrated, that can compromise the structural integrity that they have in their tissues," McCue said. Nighttime is when cacti open their pores to get rid of retained water and take in carbon dioxide, she explained. It wasn't just this summer's 31-day streak of highs at or above 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 Celsius), but also the multiple nights when the low never dipped below 90 degrees (32.2 Celsius). People commonly assume that cacti are made to endure scorching heat, but even they can have their limits, McCue said. Some in the Desert Botanical Garden date beyond its opening 85 years ago, and the largest there measure almost 30 feet (9 metres), according to McCue. Saguaros can live up to 200 years and grow as tall as 40 feet (12 metres). And that this could be sending them over the edge." "So part of our thinking is that there are still saguaros today that were compromised from what they went through in 2020. "Since 2020, we have had elevated mortality in our population of saguaros compared to mortality rates pre-2020," said Kimberlie McCue, the garden's chief science officer. These saguaros, a towering trademark of the Sonoran Desert landscape, were already stressed from record-breaking heat three years ago, and this summer's historic heat - the average temperature in Phoenix last month was 102.7 degrees Fahrenheit (39.3 degrees Celsius) - turned out to be the cactus needle that broke the camel's back.
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She advises people to give water and specialty fertilizer to a distressed tree or plant every other day and not to trim them.Īt the Desert Botanical Garden, three of the treasured institution's more than 1,000 saguaro cacti have toppled over or lost an arm in the last week, a rate that officials there say is highly unusual. "Twenty-year-old trees are losing all their leaves, or they're turning a crisp brown." "A lot of people are calling and saying their cactus is yellowing really hard, fell over or like broken arms, that sort of thing," Booth said.

Residents across the sprawling metro are finding the extended extreme heat has led to fried flora, and have shared photos and video of their damaged cacti with the Desert Botanical Garden. That could mean trouble not just for people but for some plants, too. city ever in July, Phoenix climbed back up to dangerously high temperatures Wednesday. After recording the warmest monthly average temperature for any U.S.
