I'm nowhere near your zone, but I stumbled across a clematis blog last week by Edith Malek, the Clematis Queen, and if I recall correctly, she gardens in zones higher than yours, but she may be in a wetter part of the country than you. Clematis do like a lot of water - I use a rain gauge and water them if we don't get 2" per week, although that sounds like a lot. We have had people posting here who garden in Texas successfully, so I'm not sure that the heat is the problem, but water might be.

Yeah definitely no rain here! Well I'll have to put it on a drip system, when I find one.Thank you for your response :)