Think of soil-water potential as the “suction” a plant has to generate to pull water out of the ground:
| More water in soil → easy sip | 0 kPa |
|---|
| Normal field conditions | –30 to –300 kPa |
| Very dry (plants struggling) | –500 to –1 500 kPa |
Numbers are negative because the water is under tension—like water in a straw you’re trying to suck upward.
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How much effort is that?
A –941 kPa “suction” is about what you’d need to lift a column of water 94 metres (300 feet) high—roughly the height of the Statue of Liberty. No root system can create that much pull for long.
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How dry is it?
Imagine squeezing a soaked kitchen sponge. When it’s still wet, water drips out easily (low suction). Keep squeezing until it’s almost bone-dry; now you’d need a vacuum pump to extract the last drops. That bone-dry stage is close to –941 kPa.
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Why does it matter?
By late May the soil had dried to the point where many crops were already under severe stress and on the way to the “permanent wilting point” (around –1 500 kPa) at which most plants can no longer recover even if it rains.
Plain-English rewrite for your article
“By the end of May the soil had become so parched that plants would have to suck water up the height of a 30-storey building to get a drink—an almost impossible task for roots.”
This keeps the technical accuracy while giving readers a vivid picture of just how dry –941 kPa really is.