Another Atmospheric River

 All of us in the golf world, both players and operators watch weather fairly closely as the sport we all are a part of is played outdoors and thus impacted by weather. As such, I'm sure for most of you it comes as no surprise  that we are in for another Atmospheric River starting Wednesday 11/20/24. Dr. Daniel Swain, a weather forecaster from UCLA states.....

"The upcoming atmospheric river event will be a very long duration event for portions of Northern California north of the SF Bay Area... This combination of long duration and strong intensity will yield an overall rain event that will be, in many ways, more impressive than the sum of it's parts." (Weather West - November 18 2024)

Radar imagery from the Weather Channel 11/20/24 12:00 PM.

10 day forecast from Wednesday 11/20/24

What Does This Mean for The Golf Course?

Of course it means the golf course will be wet and we will be cart path only until the course dry's out. Additionally we will potentially need to call for some F9 & B9 alternating closures as the course dry's out to make pigment applications to our hybrid bermuda fairways to help them with winter color. These scheduled applications cannot be done in the rain or when it is too wet to get application equipment onto the course without causing damage and to  it needs to dry before golf activity. 

What Have We Done to Prepare for this Storm? 

We were mowing rough today right up to the start of rainfall. Additionally we make sure all of our drainage inlets are trimmed and clean to facilitate quick movement of rain water off of the golf course. We also made a big push to finish the entrance way landscaping and irrigation work that we were in process  with as  this type of rainfall will make open ground a real mess and delay progress once the storms subside. Below are some pictures of this progress. 

Finishing up second pass on rough mowing this week on Wednesday 11/20/24 just as the rain started falling

We also finished new planting on the  parking lot mound in the entrance way ahead of the storm on Wednesday 11/20/24. 

We also added plants to the left hand bank as you enter the club. We completed renewing the irrigation of this area two weeks back. 

The renewing of the irrigation on this parking lot bank was just getting started on Monday 11/18/24. We of course were looking at the forecast and pushing to get the work completed prior to the storms so we could plant and bark which is precisely what we did. It literally started raining on us when we were raking out the last of the bark. 

11/22/24 postscript. The atmospheric river is not hitting the golf course with the originally forecasted intensity. Through Friday 11/22/24 mid morning we have had just over 1" of measured rain. The jet stream seems to be skirting us and even producing some great photo op's for Kubota.

2024 Fall Projects

We have been making steady progress with projects that are part of our Granite Bay Golf Course Master Plan after overseeding tees and select areas of the surrounds and collars in late September. Despite having numerous club events and a busy tournament calendar, the cooler weather and shorter days of fall slow the growth of the Santa Anna Hybrid Bermuda Fairways and reduce the need for irrigation and associated management opening up windows to advance on our plan. The progress we have made the past five weeks has been good considering great fall golfing weather and the need to prepare and maintain the golf course daily. Below are some pictures of the progress.

Overseeding with ryegrass in the collars was successful. This might be a temporary fix as ryegrass is very susceptible to our summer conditions, but ryegrass can take a low height of cut better than the tall fescue collars originally installed in 2021, and that we seeded the ryegrass into.

First fall project we did after overseeding was to replace the walk-on sod to the upper PG

The second project we did was to fix the perennially bad area behind #7 green. This area has always been bad, exacerbated by tree roots, inadequate irrigation infrastructure and a drainage water pattern that washed walnut shells and dirt onto the turf of upper left chipping area. It took us three weeks to dig drainage, pour curb and gutter, install irrigation, condition the soil and re-sod and add and pack DG for cart parking.

Behind #7 green on the left-hand side where we removed some walnut shells and added turf. 

Drainage was a big problem in this area and there wasn't any drainage infrastructure nearby to tap into, so we had to tap into some below the chipping area.

Here is the curb and gutter with associated drainage inlet that was installed to control traffic and catch water that comes through this area during rain events.

After #7 we started working on The Clubs entrance way landscaping which could take us the month of November and is part of our Master Plan. The first area we addressed was repairing the irrigation on the barren bank to the right of the #8 tee along the driveway. This area was originally irrigated with drip irrigation which we long ago identified as inoperable for any length of time at GBGC because the of the dirty water we pump out of our pond between #1 & #9 clogging drip filters and emitters. Replacing this system with overhead water will allow the lavender that is already there to thrive as well as new plants we plan to add in the very near future.

We have already cleared the way for new irrigation and planting on the next parking lot mound as you drive into The Club. 

More to come on this, but the work we will be doing this year is just part of the plans we have for the entrance way, parking lot and clubhouse landscape and is largely focused this year on repairing irrigation infrastructure.  Without proper irrigation in the west, you can't sustain turf or plants and is a major theme of our plans.