WHAT A WILD MONTH! storms wrecked havoc on the course

BY KURTIS WOLFORD GOLF COURSE SUPERINTENDENT

Boy is the maintenance crew glad January is over. Mother nature kept punching us in the gut over and over again and would not let up. After the barrage of storms we had, here are some weather details from our weather station.

• 16.63 inches of rain in 20 days.

• Maximum wind gust that ranged from 42-60 MPH.

Mother nature had us on the ropes for sure. The damage was obvious. The course looked like a hurricane went through it — branches everywhere, trees broken in half, trees down, trees on houses. The total number of trees either downed or damaged so much they needed to be removed was 61. We also had many other damages to the Club, such as the driving range net, patio sail shade cover, irrigation controllers etc.

The crew worked their keesters off when we could in a safe manner in between storms. We even called in some reinforcements from employees from the restaurant, and outside service staff to help pick up branches. Of the 61 trees needing work, our crew did 50 trees. Grover Tree provided us a bid for all the tree work, but out of the total bid, our crew did equivalent to $80,000 worth of tree work in 20 days.

Let's talk about debris removal. We hauled off 150 tons of wood. Thank you to Casey and Rudy Vaccarezza at Cal- Waste for being awesome partners and helping us out with the hauling of wood logs debris. All of the twigs, branches, and wood chips from the tree work went to our dump area.

We did save a few logs from special trees that we can turn into benches in the future. These series of storms have a striking similarity to the storms of 2017, when the Club lost a lot of trees. We have a long road to recovery. Grover Tree and the crew have already started grinding tree stumps and preparing those areas for new sod. We will be working diligently on getting the course back into shape.

We received the new sprinkler heads from Toro during all these storms. We are formulating a plan to install them. The new sprinklers will give us better performance, applying water over a radius of 65-70 ft. Many of the heads on the course are 30+ years old and worn out. We are also replacing the small valve boxes with many of the lids worn out. We are replacing them with a bigger thicker valve box. Like with many infrastructures type items, irrigation heads are not the miracle fix for all wet and dry spots. We have numerous environmental factors influencing performance such as tree shade, tree roots, and slopes. The new sprinkler heads are laying the foundation for years of good performance and being able to irrigate correctly. This is a BIG project on our plate. It will take us time to get all 2,300 new heads installed. Look for updates over the next few months as we dive into that project.

We have lot of work to do as we roll into spring and the golf season. I hope Mother Nature gives us a break and has a nice mellow summer for us.

BY KRISTINE ROBERSON MEMBERSHIP DIRECTOR