Dry Start to 2025

The wet weather that Northern California experienced in late December of 2024 has flipped to dry in 2025. Mornings have been a bit frigid with a frost delay here and there, but with the absence of rain and occasional gusts of wind, the golf course has dried out and is playing winter fast and firm in most areas. The long tree shadows of winter keep some areas shady and therefore wet from December's rain, but we are getting one those Januarys where cold mornings and sunny temperate afternoons create good conditions for winter golf. These conditions are good for getting things done on the golf course as well as turf is not growing and we are not having to irrigate so can easily allocate resources to projects from our GBGC Master Improvement Plan. 

On that note, the week of January 20th GCM plans to start a multi-week project on the right hand side of #2 cart path near the green. We need to replace the curbing in this area that was damaged during the 2021 renovation. Additionally we want to do some irrigation retrofitting and some sod work. When doing this work, we plan on occasionally re-routing Member cart traffic in front of the green to the left had side, then over to a forward position on #3 tee. This occasional detour will start Wednesday 1/22/25 after the MLK Holiday along with back nine starts with the hope of  creating less inconvenience to the Member during our activities in the area. We estimate this work will take us through the first part of February. 

Above shows the damaged curb and the area we plan to start working on the week of January 20th. 

The detour will be delineated by simple cart directional signs. Cart path will be coned off at this juncture and the detour will be pretty hard to miss.

The forward location of #3 tee wont be much different for the pebble tees (green) but clubs will be paired with the pebbles and Granite's and Tournaments will be paired as well at about 25 to 30 yards shorter then their normal placements. 

Granite and Tournament tee markers will again  occasionally be located around the 136 yard marker on #3 when we detour cart traffic around the left hand side of #2 green during some repair and retrofitting work on the right hand side of #2.

Recent Birds of Granite Bay Golf Club

Granite Bays resident bird expert, Michele McCormick was out on the course when we were closed on Tuesday 1/21/25 and shared that she has been sighting some rare birds for our property that are starting to make GBGC their home we hope. Below are some stunning examples of Michele's work right here at GBGC.

Bufflehead

Great Blue Heron

Kingfisher

GBGC's Mute Swan returning for a third season.

Ring Necked Duck

Brand New to GBGC American Wigeon

Happy New Year

Happy New Year Granite Bay! 2025 is here and we in GCM are looking forward to another year of progress on the golf course and grounds. 2024 was a successful year for us in golf course maintenance and we look to build on that success in  2025 by continuing to work on infrastructure projects that are part of our golf course master plan. 

The end of 2024 was on the wet side but nothing too historic or alarming as December has been the wettest month of the year on average for the past 20 years. Its hard to stay productive when it is wet and rainy but we are able to make progress nonetheless. 

The pair of Swans that left us this fall returned home on January 1, 2025. This will be the third season they have  nested here assuming they are planning on staying. We did have a lone Cygnet survivor from  the pairs 2024 spring family who remained here until just a month ago after her parents left  in the fall. We believe the lone survivor is a female and just recently left we assume to find a mate.  We are hoping she returns with a mate. 

After the 11th of December it started raining and seemed like it never stopped. Seventeen out of the remaining 20 days of December we measured some precipitation. Much of the rain during the holidays was light but  the associated cloud cover, mist & fog kept the golf course wet.

As you can see from the above historic rainfall data that has been produced by our GBGC Weather station, December of 2024 was slightly below the 20 year December average. 

The only significant rain events were on the 12th and 14th which produced conditions like above which rapidly dissipated once the rain stopped. The rest of the rain days were light.

So what does GCM do when it is raining like this? The staff rarely works a full day when the weather is this stormy but there a some tasks we can accomplish such as filling divots which is what they are doing above.

Another task that can be accomplished is spreading bark in large landscape beds.  

The lighter rain events during the Christmas Holiday week kept the golf course wet without oversaturating it. So when we did get some clear weather with some sunshine on 12/31/24 through 1/2/25, we were able to get out and use small mowers (triplexes) on the fairways to clean them up. Here we are doing just that. We are not mowing much grass as the Hybrid Bermuda is not actively growing in the depth of winter, but just cleaning up and smoothing out the surface. We have to be careful and avoid soft wet areas, but have found this process to be a BMP for this year round golf course that gets played on in all kinds of conditions.

We were fortunate that these December storms were mild and dident result in the tree loss we experienced over the past two seasons. The only tree that toppled was a non-native oak tree that was planted some years ago across the path from the #8 tee.

We were rushing a bit to mow fairways to clean them up as another storm was forecasted for Friday 1/3/25 which has materialized. After that it looks like we are in for a patch of nice weather, the kind of weather that will dry the golf course out proper.