More winter....

We are tired of  winter.  This winter in particular.  With the freezing and the thawing, ice breaking and snow piling, more freezing rains, ice and then more snow....enough already.
Today I spent some time looking at the weather over the past few months and not surprising to anyone, this winter has be ridiculous in it's volatility.  Here are some pictures from our current situation.

The cart barn.

The club house.

The path to number one tee, those banks are over my head. No carts today.

As you can see the amount of snow is considerable for the time of year.  Almost a record in fact.  The record amount of snow fall on the ground at the end of February is 81 cm, this years accumulation is 54 cm.  The accumulation is not average, in both make-up and amount.  The average amount (gleaned from Environment Canada's Data Sheets) is 10 cm on the ground at the end of the month, we are well above in layers of ice and snow.  This years constant transitions from rain to snow have created layers of crusts that the new snow build up on.  

After watching the weather from Christmas to now, its plain to see that there could be some adverse effects from the freeze / thaw conditions that we've been experiencing. Because the golf course is covered in three feet of snow it is difficult to ascertain the health of the plants. One of the methods to hint at the health of the plants is to pull core samples from the greens and see how they react in the warmth of the shop.  While judging the entire golf course from such small samples (good or bad) is inaccurate, it does give us an idea of what's to come.

Here's a video of how we accomplish the the collection of the samples.

Click here to watch the video.

Its still too early to make any judgements of the conditions of the course, so please stay tuned to see the results as we find them out.