And while this week will bring some much-needed rain — which could begin Tuesday evening and last into the weekend — it won’t put much of a dent in the historic dry spell, said Brian James, a meteorologist with KXAS-TV (NBC5).
Another batch of storms well north of us will help to push it south again later today … but the front itself won’t make it into N Texas until Thursday.
James said rainfall is always welcome in August, a notoriously dry month in North Texas.
Also suffering are North Texas lawns and foundations, which tend to shift and crack when the soil gets this dry.
And that means big business for foundation repair firms.
"People think it’s a problem with the system we install," she said.
North Texas has seen just 7 inches of rain from March through July.
Rain levels put the Dallas-Fort Worth area into a Level 3 drought, or "extreme."
The drought is affecting around 16.2 million Texans, or about 62 percent of the state’s population.
"There’s long-term hope for rain," Mitchell said.