I feel your frustration and pain and know it is bad in your area, as a daylily friend lives there and he was complaining about how impossible it was to evaluate seedlings this year with the heat and drought. Have lived through years of drought and know how painful it is to watch as things dry up despite everything you are doing.
But - daylilies are amazingly hardy. When it gets this dry, they often go dormant to save energy and stay alive. Try to keep them watered as best you can and don't give up on them. Hopefully rain and cooler weather will be coming your way soon.

Good luck!

We just had a thread about this with some info you might find helpful.

Here is a link that might be useful: Drought?

Shade cloth might help if the area isn't too spread out.

I live in Texas and we had the same terrible drought last year - I spent hundreds of dollars irrigating my huge oak trees - worth every penny! I have a large bed that gets full sun from mid morning to when the sun goes down - there is a corrider of burning sun on the side of my house which offers no protection. I lost all but 2 roses and a tough crepe myrtle. I figured the daylilies were toast. But no! This spring, they pop out and bloomed beautifully! I was amazed.....didnt lose a one. I watered at night so the moisture could seep in and not cook the roots. Dont give up on them - water in the evening - as long as roots are OK, they will make it. Good luck to you and hope you get rain! To help shade my bed, I planted a couple of cherry laurel trees. I am reworking that bed - building it up with great soil and plan to mulch everything thickly for protection. I also plan to put in old garden roses, Buck roses that can take the elements rather than hybrid teas. Maybe you could mulch with grass clippings - that are light - or perhaps some hay - to protect the roots from the heat. I had considered buying some shade cloth [Home Depot] and putting tall stakes in and stapling the shade cloth to those. I just built a hoop house from pvc over some raised beds that I covered with the shade fabric for some new daylilies and seedlings that is in full, hot sun all day - it is working great. I hammer in small pieces of rebar, put the pvc over that and staple the fabric to sides of the raised beds and use zip ties to attach the fabric to the pvc.

So good news - between some very careful deep watering and rain the past two days, it seems like one of the lilies I was most worried about has actually perked up! I went outside to trim off some dead leaves and look what I found.

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There's one or two others that are still looking crispy, but they were either cheap or freebies - this one is an Ashwood Dark Side, so having it show some life just makes my day :D

Alameda, look at the found roses and the Antique Rose Emporium roses since they are Texas roses that survived for years...in Texas, teas, chinas, and the found ones like Maggie and Belinda's Dream are as lovely as the HTs, but a lot stronger.
kay

Lothlin - I'm sure seeing that fan emerging again made you feel much better. Daylilies - especially Richard Norris daylilies - will be drought survivors.

Debra

That's so nice to see those little green leaves! I have a couple sending little shoots too. I am pulling those dead leaves now whenever I can in this heat (they look exactly like in your pic) and got already quite a pile :s

Yeah, now that the temperature is a little less than insane, I'll be able to get out tomorrow and clean up the flowers - there are a lot of leaves looking like that. A LOT.

We got our first real rain tonight in I don't know how long. Other than that it's been a couple 5 min sprinkles. Almost 2" so happy to not have to water tonight. :) I've been debating clipping my leaves early so that the plants didn't have to feed so much, but didn't want to do it before the garden tour came through this weekend.

Here's my Strawberry Candy :)
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I pulled all the dead leaves, then rotten fans and cut those that won't easily pull. Thought it was gone completely. Should have been at least eleven fans because that's how many scapes it had in the beginning of summer (if I remember correctly)