Daily Herald opinion: Rainy July brought some drought relief, but we still must be careful about water use

Out here in what are often called the "leafy suburbs," we're fond of our trees.

And our roses and our daisies and our hostas and hydrangeas and dahlias and lilacs and myriad other plants that give our communities color and fragrance and explosions of joyful life.

Not to mention, of course, our lawns.

So, it came as welcome news last week to learn that, following a drought-plagued June, July burst forth as the seventh wettest on record, with 4 inches more rain than average for the month.

But was it so welcome that we can break out the sprinklers and open the faucets again?

On that point, the answer from the experts is, "Well, not so fast."

The July drenching was important, especially in that it included several soaking downpours, rains lasting long enough to seep into the soil rather than drain quickly away. It's those kinds of rains that we really need to pull us completely out of the dry conditions we've endured this summer.

The key, says state climatologist Trent Ford in the agency's most recent report, is consistency.

"Moving forward, we will need consistent, near- to above-normal precipitation through August to really begin to improve drought conditions and avoid worse impacts to agriculture, ecology, and hydrology," Ford wrote.

Rains have a curious impact on the vitality of our trees, plants and grass. Of course, they're necessary but, as our climate writer Jenny Whidden reported in a story on struggling trees just days before the climatologist's announcement on July rainfall, how they come can have as much impact as when they don't come.

Intermittent flooding rains during prolonged periods of drought can kill root systems, creating challenges for managing the health of our greenery.

"It may not be that the whole root system has died, but there are damaged roots, and the tree is now working on a smaller root system," Sharon Yiesla, a plant knowledge specialist at The Morton Arboretum, told Whidden. "It takes time for that to grow back, and so that tree is not able to really pull water out of the soil as efficiently as it did before."

And when there's little to no water in the soil to be pulled out, the problem gets ever more difficult. Obviously, it takes measured conservation on the parts of homeowners and gardeners to provide some balance that provides much-needed water to those leafy partners that mean so much to our suburban quality of life without depleting the resource we need to maintain for years in order to survive.

So, we can be thankful to have gotten some extra moisture in the past month. But it's important to keep balance in mind and use water sparingly at least through the end of this summer.