With just a few more greens to go, we are very nearly done with removing excess snow cover from our greens. So far, things are looking good. The temps have been just warm enough to melt most of the ice off of several greens. With partly sunny and 50 degrees today and another 40 degree day tomorrow I am confident the greens should get a good breath of air (at least before they go under another 6" of snow Wednesday). However, during my survey of the golf course, one interesting thing has been well illustrated.
I have whined at length year after year about the overabundance of misplaced trees especially around our greens. Trees inhibit sunlight, air movement, traffic patterns, and steal water from surrounding turf making it difficult to grow healthy turf in shady areas. What I have never been able to illustrate is the effect trees are having on our ice accumulation and our ability to remove it. We have had normal to mild winters my entire tenure here and snow and ice has never been a problem worth banging my gums about. Enter the winter of 2014.
Ice layers on each of our greens have been in the range of a quarter-inch to 1.5 inches. I will give you one guess where the 1.5-inch ice layers have been - our shaded/ low air movement greens. Numbers 8, 2, 4, 5, 15 all have distinctly thicker layers of ice and have not melted nearly as quickly as the remainder of the greens that have been uncovered. Number 1 and 11 had the thickest layers of ice on the entire golf course due to their low-lying location on the property. However, once we got the snow off of 1 and 11, the thick ice melted almost immediately due to the increased amount of sunshine. Number 8 was THE FIRST green we blew off and has yet to thaw even a little. We have tossed some sand on it today in the hopes of accelerating melt today. That, of course, will only work if the sun decides to come out.
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| #8 was blown off THURSDAY MORNING and has thawed not at all |
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| Tossed a little topdressing sand on #8 today in hopes of attracting some rays of sunshine. |
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| #7 Green was blown off Friday and melted quickly. Should be clear by this afternoon. |
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| #15 was blown off THURSDAY as well but the lack of air movement and shade have inhibited thaw quite a bit. |
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| #3 used to be one of our shadiest greens until we removed several trees to the south last year. Nice quick thaw. |
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| #17 was blown off Friday afternoon and looked like this by Friday at 4pm. Thank you full sun. |
We are pushing snow off of the last few greens today in the hopes of exposing as much green surface as possible before they get covered up again by the coming storm. Local forecasts are anywhere from 1-8" of snow Wednesday followed by another cold snap. I know what you are thinking, and it's actually not as bad a thing as you think. Yes, we just spent a lot of time and effort blowing the snow off and now we are getting another blast. But remember, our objective was to get the ice layer off in order to get some air to the greens. By wednesday, we should have accomplished that. While it is frustrating to add yet more snow to the golf course, the coming blanket of snow will actually protect the grass through our last few freeze-thaw cycles of winter, which can also be quite damaging. Right now
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