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Morning sunshine followed by isolated thunderstorms this afternoon. High 106F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Clear to partly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low near 80F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph.

I’ve come to realize something important since I became a homeowner 13 years ago: Water is a big deal in the summertime.

That’s never been more true than right now, with the thermometer topping out over 100 degrees each afternoon.

Our front yard is still hanging in there, but only because my wife and I turn the lawn sprinkler on every other night and let it run for an hour or more.

Meanwhile, our back yard is starting to resemble the shredded wheat I have for breakfast most mornings.

I think my wife and I are about the only people in our neighborhood who don’t have an in-ground irrigation system.

We just turn on our lawn sprinkler, run a soaker hose along our foundation and try to moisten up the rest of the yard as best we can.

None of this watering and soaking has stopped our laundry room door from sticking in the frame, now that the hot, dry weather has sucked the moisture out of the soil.

This particular door starts sticking every summer, and then it goes back to closing just fine once the cooler, wetter weather sets in each fall.

But this year, the problem started well before Father’s Day. Most years, that issue doesn’t surface until well into August.

Yup, as summers go, this is going to be a bad one.

I never used to worry about whether rain was in the forecast until I became a homeowner.

Now that our house is at the mercy of the rain gods, I find myself getting excited whenever I see precipitation chances creeping into the weather forecast.

When the rain doesn’t materialize, I’m not just disappointed. I get angry.

This is especially true when the rain chances start out at 70%, then drop during the day — sometimes disappearing entirely — all in the space of six or seven hours.

It’s far too common this spring and summer to see high rain chances posted a few days down the road, and those rain chances hold steady right up until that day arrives — and then they mysteriously vanish from the chart.

How can these forecasters be so sure we’re going to get a drenching, then yank it all away?

It’s not fair, I tell you!

This unusually hot, dry summer is taking its toll on more than just our lawn and foundation.

The feral cats who come to our patio for breakfast each morning are struggling in this unrelenting heat.

My wife and I are putting out twice as much water as normal, and the poor babies are drinking those bowls dry.

I think about the deer that live in the pasture near our home, as well as the foxes and raccoons we see in the area. How are they finding enough water in this hot weather?

As far as our yard goes, we could water more often, but that only works up to a point — and it could get expensive.

A few weeks ago my wife turned the sprinkler on around 8 p.m., then we got involved in a movie on TV. We remembered the next morning that the sprinkler was still on.

After 12 hours of watering, our lawn looked pretty green, but our water bill for that month was about $15 higher than normal.

Still, that $96 bill was puny compared to the ones that some of my friends with full-yard irrigation systems pay.

One person told me his average water bill in the summer is around $300.

I hope his lawn looks great, because that’s way more money than I would consider forking over to keep my grass happy.

I guess we’ll just keep doing what we’re doing and hoping our yard can hold out until we get some rain — or until fall, whichever comes first.

By the time we get some relief, our grass may not be looking so great.

But at least we’ll still have a little green in our pockets.

Dave Miller is deputy managing editor for Opinion for the Killeen Daily Herald and editor of the Harker Heights Herald.

dmiller@kdhnews.com | 254-501-7543

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