In recent years buried drip irrigation has increased in popularity for cotton production in the Texas High Plains. A frequently installed configuration consists of a drip tape on alternate rows (2 m (80 inches) apart) buried 0.3 m (1 ft) from the soil surface. Given the frequency of rain in this region, where a large percentage of rain events are less than 10 mm (0.4 in) we hypothesized that buried drip irrigation and its impact on root growth near emitters makes poor use of water in the soil received from rainfall. We conducted experiments to test our hypothesis where cotton was irrigated under a low and high water level and we measured plant transpiration using stem flow gauges and soil water evaporation using microlysimeters. Our results indicate that our hypothesis was correct and that cotton irrigated at a high water level preferentially transpired more water from irrigation and less from rainfall compared to the lower irrigation level.