Wild Winter Weather

For those of you that may not know me well yet, you'll soon discover that I'm a numbers fanatic. I love to keep records and documentation of just about anything. Fortunately, this often proves very beneficial for this profession, not only in keeping track of all things important, but also in helping to save money, time maintenance practices and having an accurate record to compare historical events.

One of the big databases of numbers I like to keep on top of is weather. Not only is it fun to compare months, and different times of years, along with annual extreme stats, but keeping track of the weather helps us apply various fertilizers and chemicals at just the right time, punch holes when we know they'll heal the fastest, and schedule the right work, for the right turf area, at the right time.

So just to start, I thought I'd share some of the fun numbers generated so far by the few winter months we've endured:

As of December 15, 2010...
- 24 of the last 38 days we've had either frost or rain
- Current rain total for the winter is 16.34" (I've been told we average around 40")
- Max rain in one day = 5.07" (Oct. 24th)
- Lowest temperature = 22.5 F (Nov. 25th)
- Longest cold spell (days below freezing) = 7 days (Nov 23-29)
- NO SNOW!.....yet (last December was when Winchester got almost a foot of fresh powder)

It's already been a wild, wet, chilly winter so it will be interesting to see what becomes of the next few months. The good news is that despite being a bit soft in spots, the golf course is still playing great with the greens rolling truer and quicker than they have in quite some time!

Irrigation in Winter?

Some of you may have noticed sprinklers running throughout the course, on or even immediately following a rainy day and wondered to yourself, "Why in the world are they watering the golf course when it's raining?!" Rest assured, we're not irrigating at all, especially with the unusually wet weather we've had so far this year.

Our assistant superintendent, Joe Meyer, and I are going through the entire golf course doing an irrigation inventory. Over the years, many adjustments and changes have been made to the irrigation system and the whole system will only work effectively if those changes are made not only in the field, but to the irrigation central control computer as well. So we are firing off every sprinkler (for a minute or less only) to check proper function, rotation, nozzle type, sprinkler type, potential problems with sprinkler height or angle, as well as anything else that can be noted that needs to be addressed or improved. We're also mapping where each component is located in order to be able to resolve problems and utilize our system more quickly and efficiently in the do-or-die summer heat.

Once we've gathered all this information, we return indoors, where we update the computer database to ensure that what our computer calculates it needs to put out for irrigation is exactly what is going out in the field. Without the marriage of field data to computer data, it's very easy to over or under water, despite the amazing technology we're working with.

Like I'm sure many of us have heard before, a machine is only as smart as it's user. So we're getting smarter, and getting the opportunity to see each and every head close up in operation, which is nearly impossible find time to do during the active growing season and helps us find and remedy nearly all irrigation issues before they cause us serious trouble.

This is one of the many big steps that we are taking to ensure the health, playability and aesthetics of Winchester remain second to none, and that the vital lifeblood system of our course is functioning just as we intend it to for the upcoming warmer weather.