Albuquerque, NM · 87101

Lawn watering need this week

Set your controller to

0.68 - 1.02inches this week

0.68in: Keeps it alive. UC ANR is blunt about this level: expect “many brown areas, considerable thinning out, and little growth” under stress.
1.02in: Full replacement. Keeps good quality turf green and growing through the week.

Total for the week, split across the days you already water. No meaningful rain fell here in the last 7 days, so none has been deducted.

Your grass

Bermuda, zoysia, St. Augustine, centipede

Your sprinkler heads

Gear-driven heads that turn, throwing 25 ft or more. Best case for a home system.

The working

How that number is built.

Step 1
1.191in ET0
Water lost from a reference lawn, last 7 days
Measured for Albuquerque, NM from heat, wind, humidity, and sunlight combined, using the FAO-56 Penman-Monteith equations.
Step 2
0.71in
What your grass actually uses
1.191 × 0.6, the crop coefficient for warm-season turf published by the UC ANR Center for Landscape & Urban Horticulture. This is what the plant transpires. It is not a controller setting.
Step 3
0.68 - 1.02in
What you have to apply to deliver that
Rain first: 0.00 in fell in those 7 days and counts toward what the plant needed. What is left is divided by 70% system efficiency, because no sprinkler puts every drop where the grass can use it. Colorado State Extension puts spray heads at 50%, small rotors at 65%, and large rotors at 70%, and notes most untuned home systems run 30% to 40%.
The low end uses 0.4 and the high end 0.6, UC ANR’s minimal and good-quality coefficients for warm-season turf.

Is this a normal week?

Not enough past years on record here to compare against a normal.

The week behind this number

Daily reference evapotranspiration and rainfall for Albuquerque, NM 87101 over the seven completed days behind this estimate
Day	Lost to weather	Rain
Sun	0.18 in	0.00 in
Mon	0.17 in	0.00 in
Tue	0.16 in	0.00 in
Wed	0.17 in	0.00 in
Thu	0.16 in	0.00 in
Fri	0.17 in	0.00 in
Sat	0.18 in	0.00 in

Reference evapotranspiration and rainfall for Albuquerque, NM, from Open-Meteo, over the seven completed days ending Sat. Rain counts toward the week's need, so it is subtracted from what you have to put down.

Check another ZIP

Why estimates differ

Two sources can give Albuquerque, NM different numbers.

Weekly watering figures move with how the number was measured, which days it covers, and whether rain was subtracted.

How this number is worked out →

Soil temperature for Albuquerque, NM

Nearby

Watering needs near Albuquerque

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