Derby Storm

It's getting all to frequent that at some point in a multiple day tournament the skies open up, or the winds whip up, or the air and humidity heat up, and we are left with some form of damage to... clean-up!

Last night's storm dropped another 5 inches of rain on top of the Day 1 Derby total of 1.5. You can do the math but suffice is to say it was enough to put portions or entire fairways, of nearly every hole, underwater.

The photos below give a reasonable picture of what the course looked like this morning. Some haven't changed much moving into the afternoon:

Hole #10

Hole #13

Hole #3

Hole #6

New Duck Pond on #8  

-This was after a much larger area had drained

Holes -4,11,3,13 - From 4 Tee to 13 Green underwater this morning

Brick Cart Path at #17 Tee

Crushed Brick Path near 18th Green

- completely washed down to lower approach

Fun stuff huh? We're pumping, squeegeeing, replacing sand in bunkers (only a couple though), raking debris and in general prepping so that, hopefully, the first round of Derby can be completed and a second round can be started and completed as well. More on Derby...Pre-prep, storm, and storm repair, later.

 

We go 30 days without much rain at all and then just when we don't want any we get 6.5 inches! I guess next time we're in a long dry spell and need some rain, all we'll have to do is hold a tournament! Chances are it will rain! 

Things could be much worse. There was a flurry of activity at a home near the 15th green this morning with several fire trucks blocking our entrance.

Firefighter putting out remains of a probable lightning induced fire that burned the entire roof and likely destroyed much of home content. Fortunately the family was gone on vacation.

Puts things into perspective... We'll have a delay in our tournament, and may lose some grass due to standing water heating up and suffocating it, but this family probably will lose their home!

Weather Extremes Continue

It's been one of the oddest weather years I can remember in many years. Cold and wet for much of the spring, a few record hot days sprinkled in, then temperatures cooled off again, then, as summer began, two wind storms ripped though the course, and now as of Independence Day weekend, high temperatures and record heat indices are expected. Will conditions ever moderate? Less just hope that the month of July is somewhat normal without extreme heat, extreme humidity, extreme wind speed, or extreme rainfall or lack thereof!

Last Tuesday night high winds in excess of  70 mph caused tree loss, power loss, and tree debris to be strewn about the course. Six trees were destroyed, either blown over or split apart and many others lost significant limbs and numerous small branches. Our on-going tree management efforts which includes maintenance pruning and removals as necessary, surely limited the amount of tree damage we might otherwise would have received. We lost power to the Grounds Operation Center (and also the Helps Quarters, Paddle Facility, Irrigation Pumping Station, and Half Way House -all fed off the same power lines) and it remained off until Friday morning. Of all of these areas, what can potentially be devastating in an extended outage is lack of power to the Irrigation Pumping Station. Obviously, without power, pumps cannot run and irrigation cannot proceed. If weather conditions at the same time are hot and dry, turf can be severely stressed and turf loss could occur. In spite of bad luck having the storm occur and cause two full days of course clean-up for our grounds staff, the good luck was that it was cloudy, cool, and turf did not require any irrigation. A good thing indeed!

 The "Debris Field" June 22

The old apple tree near Half Way House, uprooted

 Willow on #11 lost approx. 1/3 of canopy. Perhaps time to remove in winter??

   Half of the canopy of this Hackberry on #7 was split, disfiguring to point that removal was necessary

 

Another example of large limbs that fell. This is an Ash on #15

Ryan and Gus in full "buck-up" mode

After a few long days of clean-up the course was back to normal, but then another wind storm came through this past week leaving behind another deposit of branches and leaves requiring yet another day of debris removal. Our Grounds Staff once again rose to the challenge and not only prepared the course for a busy holiday weekend but also spent a good portion of the day cleaning debris. Three clean-up day's in a week and a half is more than enough for a while! A little moderation on the weather front would be nice for a change!

Extreme Winds Subside - Tree Damage Minimal?

Unless you remained indoors these past couple days you no doubt experienced part of a wind storm system that was historic for the Midwest.

On Tuesday, over southern Oregon, the wind speed at the level of the jet stream was recorded at near 220 mph. It was this powerful jet stream energy that fueled an intense low-pressure system over the Midwest on both Tuesday and Wednesday dropping to historic levels in northern Minnesota and Chicago as well. When verified these pressure readings will likely go down as the lowest ever recorded on the mainland U.S., from a non-tropical storm.

A National Weather Service pressure gradient map from about 1 p.m. Tuesday, just a few hours before the storm reached its lowest pressure at Bigfork, MN.

Information from The Weather Channel stated: 
This was a storm stronger than the infamous "Edmund Fitzgerald" storm in Nov. 1975 and an even stronger version almost exactly 23 years after that in Nov. 1998. 
The central barometric pressure was also on par with the infamous Superstorm of 1993, and is lower than the last 4 hurricanes of the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season. 

Our on-site weather station recorded wind gusts of 49 mph, which was surprisingly less than I thought it would be. I guess I wouldn't want to experience winds greater than that! At one point while driving my cart back to our Grounds Operations Center, to get off the course for fear of flying objects, I felt like the wind was lifting under the cart's canopy nearly making it airborne! Visions of the movie Twister came to mind but thankfully no actual twisters developed.

Today, with the storm past, we began the cleanup process and we were pleased that damage was remarkably minimal. I expected trees down but there were none. Only several large branches fell along with a littering of small branches throughout the course. It was likely the fact that many tree species have already dropped their leaves and therefore did not act as huge sails, that limited the damage.

 Some of "Nature's" pruning

 A large broken branch on #6

Typical small branch littering throughout course

We were indeed fortunate that the damage was less than other locations throughout the Midwest but I do feel it may be some time before the full assessment will be known. The strength of these winds could very well have cracked or weakened significant structural portions of trees that we haven't seen yet or may not see until trees leaf-out (or lack such) next spring. Time will tell and I'll keep you posted.