GREENVILLE — Like many others, Hunt County Fire Marshal Dorsey Driggers was hoping the county would benefit from the huge storms which passed through north Texas over the weekend.

Instead, the local official rainfall total came to less than one-tenth of an inch and the county experienced no drought relief. Now Driggers is making plans to institute another ban on outdoor burning for the unincorporated areas of Hunt County, a ban which is expected to be in place by early next week.

The continuing drought is also taking its toll on stock ponds across the north Texas area. Fish kills are being reported as water levels decrease oxygen levels in the ponds.

Driggers said the decision as to whether to proceed with the ban would depend on what he heard from the chiefs of Hunt County’s volunteer fire departments, who were scheduled to meet Monday night.

“I’ve got a feeling they are going to jump all over me to get a burn ban put on,” Driggers said.

If so, then Driggers intends to meet with Hunt County Judge Joe Bobbitt today to begin the process.

“Then we’ll take it before the Commissioners Court on June 26,” Driggers said. “What we’ll have on that is a ban on outdoor burning. Burn barrels will be banned. As far as fireworks go, we will ban the use of bottle rockets and aerial-themed devices.”

Thunderstorms with heavy rain were in the forecast for most of the past weekend. Up to an inch of rain was reported to have fallen in the Denton area between Friday night and Sunday morning, with the totals closer to 10 inches toward the Houston area.

There were a few passing showers and storms which reached Hunt County. However, Majors Field Municipal Airport, the official monitoring site for the National Weather Service, recorded only nine-hundredths of an inch early Sunday. The airport’s Automated Weather Observation System (AWOS) indicated just five-hundredths of an inch fell Sunday morning.

Less than a quarter-inch of rain has been officially recorded locally so far during the month of June. Four inches of rain is the average for June in Hunt County.

As of Monday, the Texas Forest Service indicated Hunt County’s fire departments had reported 74 wildland fires, which had burned 1,872 acres so far this year. The Caddo Mills Volunteer Fire Department reported responding to 39 fires, which had consumed 1,311 acres.

Collin, Kaufman, Rockwall and Van Zandt counties already had burn bans in place as of Monday.

The lack of rainfall is also reported to be wreaking havoc with fish ponds in north Texas.

Bruce Hysmith, fisheries biologist with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, said low water levels, and increasing water temperatures, are causing a lack of dissolved oxygen in the ponds, resulting in fish acting strangely or dying off.

Hysmith is recommending pond owners use an electric pump with the intake in the deep part of the pond and a hose or pipe running from the pump to the shallow portion of the pond. Hysmith said the pump should spray the returned water into the air as vigorously as possible to artificially add more oxygen to the water.