Summertime temperature extremes can really affect the performance of your paintballs. The heat can cause your paintballs to warp and break inside your paintball gun barrel pre-shot or slow their velocity down so they not only don't travel far enough to reach your target, they are not going fast enough to break on impact. Humid conditions are not a friend of the paintball player either as humidity can cause your paintballs to become too soft and merely bounce off the target instead of breaking open and marking the target.

Your goal is to always keep your paintballs dry and cool. If you're playing paintball in the summer and you notice a lot of bounces happening instead of breakage and marking of your targets, try putting your paintballs in the refrigerator (not the freezer section) for about 30 minutes and you should notice a marked improvement in your hit and mark ration. The reason this works is that the air within the average refrigerator is not only cool, it is dry and your paintballs will not have any problems such as bouncing off targets.

If you're out playing paintball, between games you can store your pod packs, loaders and hopper in an air-conditioned car or a large cooler chest with a dry ice pack (the kind that comes in plastic) within. Don't use the same cooler you store your drinks in with loose ice. This will keep your paintballs ready to go on those long hot summer days.

If you go to load your hopper and you notice oddly shaped or oblong paintballs, these have been warped and will not return to their previous round shape. Discard any paintballs that are deformed due to heat or humidity otherwise you'll wind up with broken paintballs in your paintball gun barrel.

Make storing your paintballs correctly a priority and they will return the favor by always retaining their shape and being ready to play when you are!