Where is spring

After the spring of 2012 golfers and employees alike were spoiled by the early warm spring. When March was cold I said "It is okay as long as April is nice." Well now we are into April and things are not improving. That 60 degree weather is always 8 days out on the 10 day forecast but it never gets here.

We were able to open the driving range on Sat April 6 and my Sunday the 7th the back 9 holes were firm and snow free despite the snow and wet conditions on the front and middle 9's.

On the 7th I was able to blow off the greens and changed cups to prepare for a Monday the 8th opening. We were open for about 5 minutes when we received a half of inch of rain, followed by 1.8" of rain from Tuesday through Wednesday AM. Wed brought with it a a blanket of ice on the trees and turf along with flooded ponds and ditches.

We hope to allow play by the weekend but it depends how fast the water goes away. Looking at the forecast we should be firming up and greening up early next week. THINK SPRING! no scratch that... THINK NICE SPRING WEATHER!

The ice brought down part of a Willow on hole 4.

The pond on hole one is covering the fairway.

The trees are glimmering with ice.

 

This shot from Augusta National is a reminder that good weather is around the corner for us!

Ice removal from greens

I am a couple weeks behind with posting this but as I suggested in my last post grass under ice is not a ideal situation. We removed snow from the greens in early March to facilitate ice melt but then more snow fell and temperatures remained cold.

On March 25th the forecast suggested sunshine and upper 30 temperatures so we decided it was time to clear the greens. We started with the snow blower but when it took 8 hours just to clear the 15th green due to the deep snow I tried the dump truck and plow. It did a great job clearing the greens, but getting to the green took some skilled driving and luck as the drifts were deep.

Our goal was to remove snow on Monday/Tuesday and allow the ice to melt quickly before cold temperatures returned.

Plow on 3 green. With the ice no damage was done to the grass.

15 Green freshly blown off. The snow was too deep to plow.

 

Green dye applied to the green on Wednesday March 27.

The dark color absorbs sunlight and speeds melting.

 

With the deep snow we used a sled, a hand sprayer and jugs of water

 to apply dye to the greens.

 

Thursday March 28 the green is almost bare. The temps were only in the 30's

but the sunshine did the trick.

After plowing vole runs could be seen in the ice on the greens. I have never seen this before on greens. After the ice melt there was no visible damage.

By Saturday March 30 only holes 12 and 16 had any ice remaining and we chopped that up by hand to speed melting.

 

The greens may have been fine no matter what we did but after the long winter removing the snow and ice was the best decision.