🐸 Bark Back at the Storm Drain. If It Barks Again, It's a Frog

💡 $500,000 for Summer Power Bills, and Interfaith Is Handing It Out

🏛️ Montgomery County Seniors Are Getting a Building of Their Own

🪙 The Change in Market Street's Meters Just Bought $12,500 of Play

The calls come in every summer. Somebody hears what sounds like a dog barking from inside a neighborhood storm drain, pictures the worst, and dials 911. The Woodlands Fire Department says those calls almost always end the same way. The dog turns out to be frogs, and they are mating.

The tunnels are what sell it. "Inside of the sewer system, where you get that amplification from the tunnels, that sounds just like a barking dog," Fire Chief Palmer Buck said. The reports cluster in July and usually come after rain, when the frogs get active. Buck said a lot of the recent ones came out of Alden Bridge and Cochran's Crossing.

Because it happens so often, dispatchers sometimes hand out a test before anyone sends a truck. Go outside and bark at the drain. If something barks back, you have frogs. Firefighters have run the test themselves, barking down into a storm drain and waiting to hear the answer come back up.

Buck was blunt about the odds. "Almost every time it is frogs," he said. The department still wants the call if you think a person or an animal is actually in trouble, or if you simply cannot tell.

Why it matters: The calls keep coming because people here would rather look a little foolish than leave something stuck underground.

Source/Credits: KHOU 11 | The Woodlands Fire Department

⚠️ Heat Advisory in effect from noon to 7 p.m. Take the water bottle, and check the back seat before you walk away.

☀️ Mostly sunny · 99°F / 76°F

Humidity up to 95% · Wind up to 6 mph · Rain 0%

No rain to hide behind today, so the shade and the AC are doing all the work.

Source: Vaisala Xweather

Entergy Texas is adding $500,000 to its Power to Care program to help qualifying elderly and disabled customers get through the hottest stretch of the year. The money came out of proceeds from the utility's 2025 Power to Care Golf Charity Classic, and it sits on top of what the program already does year round.

Power to Care is funded by donations from Entergy employees, customers and shareholders, and local partner agencies do the actual distributing. It goes to customers age 60 and older and to people with disabilities who are in hardship or at risk of having the power shut off for non-payment.

Interfaith of The Woodlands is one of the partners handing out the additional funding. "We couldn't be more thrilled. This funding means we can help even more seniors who really depend on this support," said Jennifer Huffine, vice president of community impact at Interfaith. "We're always looking for additional resources."

Shirlene Cook, president of the Power to Care board of directors, put the need plainly. "No one should have to choose between essential needs and staying cool and safe," she said. Existing recipients and eligible customers can start applying August 3.

Why it matters: A Heat Advisory runs from noon to 7 p.m. today, and for some of our neighbors that is a budget problem before it is a comfort problem.

Source/Credits: Woodlands Online

Precinct 3 Commissioner Ritch Wheeler announced July 23 that seniors will get a dedicated facility off Pruitt Road near I-45, with its own rooms for activities and a kitchen and dining area built to seat 250 for hot lunches. Senior programming currently runs out of the Kevin Brady Community Center and Library, which opened last September.

The problem was never the building, it was the calendar. Elections and other events book the same rooms. "We realized the physical space was just being utilized by so many different groups," Wheeler said. "We don't want to say no to anybody, it's a great community center, everyone loves it and everyone wants to use it, but it wasn't giving the seniors their own space."

The estimate is $420,000 from the ground up out of the Precinct 3 budget, with a tentative finish in spring 2027. It runs 8,000 square feet on county land near the Precinct 3 building, with green space, a porch, and a covered spot to be dropped off when the weather turns. Any senior in Montgomery County is welcome, not just Precinct 3.

The numbers behind it are the part worth sitting with. Census estimates put the county's population age 60 and over at 137,047 in 2024, up from 105,524 in 2019. That is close to 30 percent growth in five years, against under 20 percent for the county overall.

Why it matters: The county is aging faster than it is growing, and this is the first building that treats that as a plan instead of a surprise.

Source/Credits: Community Impact

Market Street donated $12,500 to The Woodlands Children's Museum through its Change for Charity program. The mechanism is the good part. Those voluntary meters around Market Street's Central Park take whatever coins people drop in, and every quarter the total goes to a nonprofit Market Street picks.

Since the program started it has raised more than $350,000 for local charities, entirely out of pocket change.

The museum has been on Panther Creek Drive since 2001 and is open Tuesdays through Saturdays. "We are thrilled and honored to benefit from the Change for Charity program and appreciate Market Street's generous support for nonprofits in our community," said Jennifer Kraus, the museum's interim executive director. "Funding is a tremendous help as we enjoy a busy summer season full of magical activities for children and families."

Why it matters: Three hundred fifty thousand dollars, one handful of coins at a time, from people who were mostly just walking to dinner.

Source/Credits: Woodlands Online

💼 A fully leased Sawdust Road center just changed hands: the 13,500-square-foot Shoppes at Sawdust sold with 5Point Credit Union, Little Caesar's, Cloud 9 Dental and Jimmy John's inside and Walmart anchoring the shadow next door. Read more in Shopping Center Business

🍽️ The Rayford Road Panera is already open again, the ceremony comes later: it quietly reopened July 16 after going dark last summer, and the ribbon cutting lands August 5 at 12:30 p.m. with Hamra Enterprises CEO Mike Hamra on hand. Read more in Community Impact

🤝 There is a free class on how to behave at a polling place: Commissioner Ritch Wheeler is hosting "Respecting the Voter's Experience" August 18 from 6 to 7 p.m. at the Kevin Brady Community Center, open to voters, poll workers, candidates and campaign staff alike. Read more in Woodlands Online

🗓️ Seniors Dance & Mixer | Kevin Brady Community Center | 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. | $5 donation | More info

🗓️ Family Storytime | George & Cynthia Mitchell Library | 9:30 and 10:30 a.m. | Free | More info

🗓️ Internet Safety | George & Cynthia Mitchell Library | 10:00 to 11:00 a.m. | Free | More info

🗓️ Meet an Opera Singer | The Woodlands Children's Museum | 11:00 a.m. | $10 admission | More info

🗓️ Pencil & Apple Bath Bomb Workshop | Magnolia Ritual Apothecary | 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. | $10 | More info

🗓️ Casual Carats Jewelry Trunk Show | Robichau's Jewelry | 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. | More info

🗓️ Christmas in July Swag Class | Picket Fences Home Decor | More info

🗓️ Rock the Row with Nervous Rex | Hughes Landing | 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. | More info

🗓️ The Pussycat Dolls, PCD FOREVER Tour | The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion | More info

🗓️ The Eagle Community Blood Drive | Houston Methodist The Woodlands Hospital | More info

🗓️ Parent's Night Out | Woodlands Sportsplex | 6:00 to 8:30 p.m. | $25 per child | More info

🗓️ Lost in Hollywood | Sawyer Park Icehouse | Free | More info

🗓️ Teen Career Seminar | George & Cynthia Mitchell Library | 3:00 to 4:30 p.m. | Free | More info

🗓️ 3D Printer Orientation | Kevin Brady Library | 1:00 to 2:00 p.m. | Free | More info

🗓️ Cars & Coffee for a Cause | Market Street | 6:00 to 10:00 a.m. | More info

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Creekside Park, the ninth village, opened on October 19, 2007. That was not a coincidence. It was the exact 33rd anniversary of the day The Woodlands itself opened, right down to the calendar date.

"Can't dance, never could sing, and it's too wet to plow." Translation: might as well go on and do it, there's nothing better going.

You spend the first two years of a kid's life teaching them to walk and talk, and the next sixteen asking them to sit down and be quiet.

I'm reading a book about anti-gravity. It's impossible to put down.