Golf Course Maintenance Weekly 1/25/17

Historic Winter

Although it's been awhile since we have published a course update, allot has been going on, most of it weather related. Below are rainfall totals measured right here at the golf club by our on course weather station. As you can see  during our current rainfall year in which the data is measured from October through September, total accumulation YTD is just under 23". Average historic rainfall for our area is 24" so we are only 1" below average with February and the spring ahead of us. Additionally two of the four rainfall months in 2016 - 2017 have #1 rankings. October 2016 was a historic month State wide for rainfall and we measured just under 5-1/2" by far the most measured ever at GBGC for the month of October. I don't know if January rainfall accumulation will be a record for the State but the 10-1/2" accumulation measured here at GBGC is another record for us.

An article in the Sacramento Bee this morning (1/25/17) conveyed the reasons why with all of this rain the reservoir is half full. Bottom line it is a comparatively small reservoir that is fed by a substantial watershed and the reservoirs primary purpose is flood control for Sacramento. The up and down graph has us currently below historic average however the best news for the reservoir that supplies all of our summer irrigation  is the snow accumulation in the North and Central Sierras.

The month of January changed the below snow map almost overnight. This will be the water that will fill Folsom reservoir hopefully to the top by June. 

State wide the reservoirs are looking very good as one would expect with the rain we have been receiving. It will be interesting to see how the State proceeds with drought regulations and such this year although water conservation is the new normal in CA despite all of this wet weather.  

Wondering How The Golf Course Handles All The Rain?

Recent storm just getting started on #3 green.

For the most part all of the rain we have received has been fallen fairly steady with very few heavy downpours. Areas that are covered with turf handle even large amounts of rain very well, even downpours. Sand traps are another story. Our traps can handle steady rain pretty well but downpours wash sand off the faces of the traps and have now started to undermine the liner and sub surface base of these faces in a few areas. When we do get sustained rainfall there is allot of recovery that takes place in the sand traps afterwards which is just part of the job. Depending on the severity of the washouts it could take over a hundred man-hours to recover all of our sandtraps after a good rainfall, and close to 200 man hours after a severe downpour. So far this year we have had to do plenty of recovery but have avoided those serious downpours that makes our life difficult afterwards.

Fairway bunker on #9 after a recent storm.

Recovery in process

On rare occasions usually after a good rain event we have some visitors that come to play and dry out. These are two North American River Otters . River Otters are spotted occasionally here at Granite Bay but they don't stay long.