Thursday, February 19, 2015

Cold weather

Since my last post, winter decided to start acting more like itself. After a mild December, January and February have been snowy and very cold. We currently have a thick blanket of snow on the ground, which is keeping us off the course. Some of you may be wondering what effect this cold weather has on the golf course, especially after we had some winter desiccation last year in similar weather. However, when we had the the arctic blast of 2014, we hardly had any snow and the wind blew so hard that some grass was exposed to the frigid weather and in these areas we had some damage. Well, the good news is that we do have that snow cover on the ground to protect the grass. Snow acts like a blanket for the grass, insulating it from the cold and wind winter brings, so we should avoid any of the wind damage that we had last year.

Winter damage on #18 green. Picture is from 1/13/14.











Picture of course from 2/18/15. Can you guess the hole?











However, you can have too much snow for too long. I'm not sure exactly how long we've had snow cover, but it's probably approaching 7 weeks. According to Purdue University, "Mild symptoms (a few small patches) can be expected after 40 to 60 days of snow cover, moderate levels of disease occur after 60 to 90 days of snow cover, and severe outbreaks threaten when there are more than 90 days of snow cover." We are definitely in the mild symptom zone approaching the moderate symptom zone and while we did spray greens, tees and fairways for snow mold, the chances for a break through increase the longer we have snow cover which, based on the forecast, might be a while.

Below are a few interesting articles on snow and winter damage for those who are curious.

Article titled "Snow" from December 1916 (Yes 1916)  issue of The Golf Course. 


Winter damage article from Dr. Danneberger at OSU. 


The snow molds, also from OSU. 


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