water the grass in a thunderstorm

to perform an action whose effects will be negligible in comparison to broader forces at work, and will be difficult or impossible to accurately measure, as in “We don’t need to send someone to Times Square to shill for Hamilton,1 that’s like watering the grass in a thunderstorm”; used to highlight the futility of a proposed course of action and dissuade the hearer from further considering it; the length2 and obscure intent of this phrase conspire to render it exceedingly rare in actual usage, as jargon users tend to favor more jocund terms used in backslapping fashion

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