The American Psychological Association defines a phobia, which is now called an anxiety disorder, as "a persistent and irrational fear of a specific situation, object or activity which is consequently either strenuously avoided or endured with marked distress."

People who have a fear of heights are acrophobic, while people who fear darkness are nyctophobic. Triskaidekaphobia is anxiety related to and the avoidance of the number 13. A fear that is specifically rooted in a Friday that falls on the 13th day of a month is called paraskevidekatriaphobia.

A Gallup poll found that 25% of Americans are very or somewhat superstitious of Friday the 13th, but a study published in the Bulletin of The American Meteorological Society found that the weather makes more Americans nervous than a date on the calendar – 85% of respondents said they had some degree of fear about severe weather and 40% said they had a moderate degree of fear.

Phobias related to nature and the environment are one of five subclassifications of fears outlined by the APA.

According to the APA, people are resilient and over time, sometimes with help, most can bounce back from weather-related trauma. People who suffer from these disorders can experience panic, rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath, trembling and a strong desire to get away wrote MentalHeatlh.gov.

ADVICE FOR DEALING WITH STORM ANXIETY WHEN SEVERE WEATHER THREATENS

Lilapsophobia

This is an unhealthy fear of tornadoes or hurricanes. The AMS study also showed that more than 40% of people had a fear of tornadoes and tropical storms. People who suffer from this phobia can live their lives like they are constantly under threat. Exposure therapy is a common treatment, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

Conquering this phobia led FOX Weather’s Kendall Smith to a career in meteorology. You can read more about her experience here.

Astraphobia

This is an unhealthy fear of thunder and lightning. More than 90% of AMS study respondents said they have suffered from astraphobia, and the Cleveland Clinic reported that it is one of the most common specific phobias.

Talk or exposure therapy and medication can help ease the symptoms. Meteorologists also suggest weather education to ease anxiety. Read more about how to deal with storm anxiety here.

Ancraphobia

This is an unhealthy fear of wind and drafts. While 90% of people in the AMS study said they have feared high winds at some point, irrational fear of wind is quite rare.

Chinophobia

This is an unhealthy fear of snow. Nearly 80% of respondents in the AMS study said they have feared heavy snow. Several people with this fear suffered snow-related trauma like losing someone to a car accident in the snow.

Ombrophobia

This is a fear of rain, which includes heavy rain, acid rain, germs in rain and flooding rain, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

Other weather-related fears

If you or someone you know suffers from these disorders, please seek the help of a medical professional or licensed therapist.

TCPALM/Treasure Coast Newspapers

Imagine living in a world where good intentions and wishful thinking are more important than reality. That pretty much describes where state regulators are in their efforts to curb pollution seeping into Lake Okeechobee.

The State of Florida has divided the properties along the lake into 32 drainage basins. A recent investigation by TCPalm found pollution in every one of those basins exceeded the limits deemed acceptable by the state between May 2016 and April 2021.

Most of the time, it's not even close. The investigation found pollution levels were 5.7 times above the acceptable limits on the median for those drainage basins.

But you wouldn't know this if you were relying on the state Department of Environmental Protection's data. The state uses modeling estimates that credit pollution-reduction initiatives, regardless of their effectiveness, in determining whether so-called Basin Management Action Plans are working.

Relying on the modeling estimates rather than actual data is like turning up the car radio's volume to drown out the sound of an annoying rattle symptomatic of mechanical trouble.

A failing system:‘Look at the water for evidence.’ Data proves Florida pollution prevention not working

A longstanding problem:For years, TCPalm has sounded alarm about BMAPs not working. Read our past investigations

A catalyst for change:Blue-Green Algae Task Force addresses agriculture, septic systems, public health issues

It's not entirely surprising, though. The state has been lax in other areas of environmental regulation, such as monitoring the amount of lead in the St. Sebastian River.

In TCPalm's investigation, reporters Sydney Czyzon, Max Chesnes, and Lindsey Leake evaluated readings from water-quality monitors used by the South Florida Water Management District. Those readings tell a much different story about the amount of pollutants like phosphorus, primarily from cow manure, seeping into the lake from nearby farms.

Water from the lake is regularly discharged into the St. Lucie River and eventually the Indian River Lagoon, so this pollution should be of great concern to people all around eastern Florida.

The state must take several steps to address this problem.

The first and most obvious is to communicate to property owners along the lake the "best management practices" are mandatory, not optional. Based on comments some property owners made to our reporters, there seems to be some confusion on this point.

The state also must overhaul its efforts to inspect and enforce compliance with those rules. Currently, the Department of Agriculture inspects properties, then refers suspected noncompliance to the DEP.

The DEP could fine polluters up to $50,000, which should be enough to get property owners' attention, but it never has.

It's an inefficient system to have one government agency do inspections, then hand cases off to another agency for enforcement. One department should handle both.

Whichever agency is responsible should treat enforcement as a critical part of its mission and not an afterthought. If there aren't enough inspectors to handle potential cases, the state should allocate more funding to handle that duty.

Of course the state's enforcement efforts should be based on data provided by the water-quality monitors and not just modeling that doesn't accurately reflect what's happening in the lake.

In fact, the state should increase water-monitoring efforts to more accurately identify sources of pollution. There are dozens of properties within each drainage basin, so the state should add monitors to pinpoint which property owners are out of compliance with the standards.

If the state does all of that and water pollution still exceeds acceptable limits, then it might be necessary to consider more stringent standards.

It doesn't seem like we're at that point yet, however. The standards in place might work if they were actually being followed. We won't know that for sure until the state develops a more rigorous inspection and enforcement routine.

Along the Treasure Coast, water quality seems like a nonpartisan issue. Elected officials from both major parties seem to understand how important clean water is to our local economy and way of life.

Understanding is meaningless, though, unless it leads to action. The time for action is now.

Editorials published by TCPalm/Treasure Coast Newspapers are decided collectively by its editorial board. To respond to this editorial with a letter to the editor, email up to 300 words to TCNLetters@TCPalm.com.

TCPalm has exposed Florida’s ineffective water quality programs for years, but problems persist, the environment suffers and manatees are dying in record numbers.

The most recent investigation is the first one to show that every single rainfall runoff drainage basin around Lake Okeechobee with available data routinely exceeds the state nutrient pollution limits set by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).

That finding, using South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) data, questions the effectiveness of two programs meant to help reduce contamination in waterways: Basin Management Action Plans (BMAP) and Best Management Practices (BMP).

Here are some of TCPalm’s previous investigations into these programs and other problems:

2016 | State puts St. Lucie River polluters on honor system to reduce nitrogen

TCPalm uncovered flaws with the state’s system for tracking the amount of pollution in the water.

Instead of tracking pollution reduction with monitors, state officials used modeling estimates in BMAPs and trusted polluters at their word. That led to progress reports painting overly rosy pictures about the state’s waterways. They still do.

TCPalm unveiled industrial amounts of human waste and manure being used as fertilizer on farms around Lake Okeechobee. Chemicals from the fertilizers, including phosphorus and nitrogen, run off farms into waterways and can cause toxic algae blooms.

Lacking caps on fertilizer use further muddle the state’s ability to pinpoint pollution sources, TCPalm found. The story showed limited participation in BMPs.

TCPalm exposed the powerful influence of sugar lobbyists in weakening the state’s environmental regulations.

The state’s track record of giving polluters credit merely based on their word came after a DEP meeting with U.S. Sugar, records show. That strategy usurped an earlier proposal, which would’ve pinpointed the worst polluters and punished them, but instead kept weak BMAPs in place.

TCPalm identified discrepancies between DEP and SFWMD reports. The first agency used models that show progress in reducing pollution, while the latter agency used monitors and hard data that show worsening water quality.

The real numbers show problems with the state’s BMAP and BMP systems in helping waterways.

Sydney Czyzon is TCPalm's projects reporter. Contact her at sydney.czyzon@tcpalm.com, 772-469-6045, @SydneyCzyzon on Twitter or @ReporterSydney on Facebook.

Lindsey Leake is TCPalm’s health reporter. She contributed significant data analysis and digital producing to this report. Contact her at lindsey.leake@tcpalm.com, 772-529-5378, @NewsyLindsey on Twitter or @LindseyMLeake on Facebook.

TCPalm’s exclusive investigation of Florida’s flagship program to limit nutrient pollution flowing into Lake Okeechobee is the first to show that every single rainfall runoff drainage basin around the lake with available data exceeds the state limit.

Reporting on the Basin Management Action Plans (BMAP) wasn’t simple. It required a lot of research, interviews, records requests and data analysis to uncover problems.

To understand the amount of pollution entering Lake O, reporters Sydney Czyzon, Max Chesnes and Lindsey Leake relied on water quality monitoring data tracked by the South Florida Water Management District. That data is in the SFWMD’s Environmental Reports for 2021 and 2022, in the chapters detailing water quality around Lake O.

Leake and Czyzon compared pollution amounts recorded by the SFWMD to pollution limits set by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).

The reporters divided concentrations for each basin by the state limit to determine all of them had exceeded the limit, not only in 2020 and 2021, but on five-year averages from 2016 through 2021. “All” means all 32 of the 41 basins around Lake O that had available data in 2020 and 2021. “Year” means a “water year,” measured from May 1-April 30.

Czyzon used contrasting data from DEP and SFWMD reports to show discrepancies. While DEP reports farmers were reducing pollution, SFWMD reports they exceeded limits. Czyzon referenced Figure 6 of DEP’s 2020 Statewide Annual Report showing Lake O exceeding its pollution reduction target to pollution loading data shared in chapters 8B of the 2021 and 2022 SFWMD reports.

Reporters also reviewed hundreds of pages of environmental reports to understand the BMAP program. This includes the Lake O chapters of the 2021 and 2022 editions of the SFWMD Environmental Report, the 2020 DEP Statewide Annual Report and the Lake Okeechobee Basin Management Action Plan.

To geographically evaluate basin and watershed locations, reporters used an online mapping application available on the SFWMD website. Reporters used the application’s layering feature to see parcels within each basin.

The state’s pollution-tracking method makes it impossible to pinpoint which among multiple parcel owners in a basin may contribute most to water contamination. However, mapping allowed TCPalm to determine that Rio Rancho Corp. was the sole parcel owner in basin S-154C.

Czyzon recreated the map for readers by using watershed boundaries that most closely matched the Lake O pollution data from the 2021 and 2022 SFWMD reports, shown in Tables 8B-6. Czyzon downloaded an existing mapping file from the SFWMD website for watersheds around Lake O, then imported that file into Google My Maps.

Czyzon was unable to exactly match the boundaries of some watersheds because SFWMD officials said they could not locate correlating mapping files to Tables 8B-6 in the reports. Due to this, watersheds not shown on TCPalm’s map include the L-61E Basin, East Beach Drainage District (Culvert 12), East Shore Drainage District and the lower and upper Kissimmee subwatersheds.

Czyzon and Chesnes used Florida’s open records law to request documents from DEP and the Department of Agricultural Services (DACS), including DEP records detailing noncompliant landowners referred to DACS for enforcement and templates of the warning letters mailed to them. The reporters also were the first to request and receive nutrient records from DACS on the amount of phosphorus being applied to the land around Lake O, nearly 2 million pounds.

DEP denied one request for the agenda and minutes of an Aug. 5, 2021, meeting between DEP and DACS to discuss nitrogen and phosphorous applications. DEP spokesperson Alexandra Kuchta said there was no agenda or meeting minutes.

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office emailed a prepared statement via spokesperson Jared Williams. DEP and DACS answered questions via email through spokespersons Kuchta and Erin Moffet, respectively. On-the-record interviews were conducted with:

Rio Rancho Corp. owner Juan Gaitan declined an interview during a brief phone conversation Sept. 15. Czyzon called his verified phone number five times over two months and left voicemails. Czyzon, Chesnes and photojournalist Patrick Dove went to his company’s registered address, 12390 Highway 70 West in Okeechobee, on Oct. 21, but workers said Gaitan was not there and the property was not Rio Rancho.

Czyzon and Chesnes conducted multiple interviews that were on background or off the record, meaning the information could not be included or attributed in the story.

Lindsey Leake is TCPalm's health, welfare and social justice reporter. Contact her at lindsey.leake@tcpalm.com, 772-529-5378, @NewsyLindsey on Twitter or @LindseyMLeake on Facebook.

TCPalm’s exclusive investigation of Florida’s flagship program to limit nutrient pollution flowing into Lake Okeechobee is the first one to show that every single rainfall runoff drainage basin around the lake with available data exceeds the state limits.

Reporters analyzed data, maps, warning letters to noncompliant landowners and hundreds of other documents, some obtained through state open records laws. They also interviewed nearly a dozen farmers, environmentalists and public officials.

Here’s a summary of what they found.

What is BMAP?

BMAP stands for Basin Management Action Plan. These plans are adopted by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and include legally enforceable strategies to improve damaged waterways. Thirty-eight water bodies are covered by BMAPs.

Is it effective?

No. Water monitoring data shows BMAPs don’t prevent high levels of pollution from entering Lake Okeechobee yearly. Plus, finger-pointing between agencies, outdated modeling and lacking enforcement hinder the success of BMAPs.

How did it get this way?

Florida officials haven’t backed new regulations with the funding required to fulfill them.

For example, the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (DACS) is supposed to inspect farms every two years to verify they are adhering to best management practices that reduce pollution. DACS said it doesn’t have enough staff to fulfill its duties, but will ask for more during the legislative session that begins Jan. 11.

DEP and DACS also go back and forth on which is responsible for enforcing the rules.

DEP has the authority to issue fines and pursue lawsuits against farmers, but it never has. Farmers praise the state’s “cooperative” approach and avoid any punishments.

Is there a better system?

Not yet, but there could be. Water advocates say more funding, staff members, water quality data, enforcement and support could bolster the BMAP system.

Why doesn’t anyone do anything?

The confusing and complex nature of BMAPs keeps it from the public’s view. That means officials aren’t held accountable for the system’s problems.

People who feel the system isn’t working can contact their legislators in the state House or Senate with concerns. The legislative session starts Jan. 11.

Another option is donating to nonprofits that fight to help Florida’s waterways. See TCPalm’s 12 Days of Christmas series for what some of them need.

Lindsey Leake is TCPalm’s health reporter. She contributed significant data analysis and digital producing to this report. Contact her at lindsey.leake@tcpalm.com, 772-529-5378, @NewsyLindsey on Twitter or @LindseyMLeake on Facebook.