Storm Update

Last week when the weather forecast included the possibility of rain, I was very slow to get excited because you have to have had patience over the last 14 months of forecasts that did not full fill their promise of rain. Well this time mother nature came through with close to 4 inches of rain, and it has not stopped yet.

There are a few reasons I am happy about the rain. The first is that we are in a drought and we have been asked to reduce our water use by 20%. That is not a big number right now, however if we need to reduce by that amount in summer, it will impact a lot of the course. The next reason is that without rain, any salts found in our irrigation water build up in the, soil and impact the quality of the grass. We were reaching levels of salts that if we got to spring without some flushing rains, combined with the reduced irrigation,  the turf would be impacted.

This rain has fallen slowly and soaked into the ground with limited run off and damage to the course, with just a couple of exceptions.

Blocked drainage in the front of #2 green

Blocked drainage in the front of #14 green

In both of these drainage problems the existing drain lines had been compromised by tree roots and repaired.

Elsewhere, the trees did very well. There was only minor damage with small limbs that came down.

So what can we expect now that the rain has come. Well, I think that we can expect more rain, because of the change in the position of the jet stream to a normal pattern. I don't think that we can say that we will not have water restrictions this summer, because of how far below normal we are at this time. When summer comes we are in a very good position to handle any challenges that come our way, and for now I am giving  a sigh of relief that the forecast was accurate and the rain did come as predicted.

Kevin