🗞️ Enjoy the cool: triple-digit heat is headed back

🗞️ Bed bugs shut a Forsyth courtroom, delaying 300+ cases

🗞️ UNCSA buys two South Main Street properties for $2.5M

🗞️ How to water smart while we are in a drought

🌞 Pleasant, becoming sunny | High: 83°F | Low: 63°F

Soak this one up. Mostly cloudy early, then turning sunny with a comfortable high near 83 and a light northeast breeze. It is the last easy day for a while.

Take today off from the air conditioning while you can. The National Weather Service says this mild stretch is a short break, with Tuesday holding at typical summer temperatures in the 80s before the heat comes roaring back.

Wednesday pushes highs back into the 90s, and then it gets serious: extreme heat is forecast Thursday through Sunday across the Triad, with temperatures approaching the 100-degree mark Friday through Sunday. If you have outdoor plans this weekend, front-load them into the morning and plan for water, shade and a cool place to retreat.

One silver lining is the recent rain, which dropped nearly three inches on parts of Greensboro and about an inch and a half on Winston-Salem so far this month. It has not fixed the bigger problem, though. Guilford County is still running nearly nine inches below normal rainfall for the year, and the region remains in drought, which is why the water conservation ask is still in place.

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Court came to a halt at the Forsyth County Hall of Justice last Thursday, and not for any of the usual reasons. Shortly after 9:30 a.m., everyone inside Courtroom 308 was told to clear out after someone was spotted with bed bugs on their clothing. The courtroom shut down for the day and more than 300 cases were pushed back, including several tied to the deadly Leinbach Park shooting earlier this year.

From there it turned into a full operation. A pest control company brought in a trained canine detection team to sweep the third floor and any other suspect areas, with targeted treatments to follow wherever the dogs alerted. The building stayed open and most staff kept working in their offices, but the vendor required the entire third floor, including all the courtrooms and the jury assembly room, to be completely empty for the inspection.

County emails asked employees to give the crews room to work and not to distract the dogs, and noted that anyone uneasy around dogs could step out while their department was being checked. An unusual day at the courthouse, and a lot of court dates that will have to be rescheduled.

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The UNC School of the Arts is expanding its footprint. The school paid $2.5 million for two tracts off South Main Street in Winston-Salem, according to a Forsyth County Register of Deeds filing Monday.

The larger piece is a 0.8-acre lot at 1315 S. Main St. with a 10,350-square-foot office building on it, along with a smaller 0.17-acre tract listed as 0 Spangler Way. The buyer is UNCSA Foundation Management LLC, and the seller was a Winston-Salem group. UNCSA has not said what it plans to do with the properties, so for now the interesting part is simply that one of the Triad's marquee institutions is quietly buying up land near its campus.

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With the county asking everyone to cut back on water and another blast of heat on the way, this is a good week to rethink how you water the yard. The simplest fix is timing: water early in the morning, when less of it evaporates and grass has time to dry before nightfall, which also keeps fungal problems down.

Then change how you water, not just when. Water deeply and less often so roots grow down into cooler soil that holds moisture longer, and break a long run into a couple of shorter cycles so the water soaks in instead of running down the driveway. Soaker hoses and drip lines aimed at the base of plants beat overhead sprinklers, which lose a lot to the air. A two to three inch layer of mulch over the roots can drop soil temperature noticeably and hold moisture in.

Longer term, a smart irrigation controller that adjusts to the weather or to soil moisture can save thousands of gallons a year, and swapping thirsty plants for native, drought-tolerant ones means less watering forever. Your lawn will survive a little stress. The reservoir will thank you.

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