The Monday night storm bought some wind and heavy rain to the course. But we missed the hail and straight line 60-70 mile winds just to our south. The inch of rain did help the over all 3inch rain deficit that the area has been running. Of course it's extremely wet out there,so carts are restricted to the path and will be for the next several days. The cold weather at night is keeping the soil temperature at 46 degrees average on the greens. We have started to filled the irrigation system this week, so you may see a head or two come on to take out air in the system. The irrigation will be needed to water in applied chemicals on the greens next monday. We expect to find some leaks, that will need to be fixed before the turf season starts as well. Tuesday we had a small hydraulic oil leak with the greens mower on the putting green. A hose burst just as the operator was starting a pass across the green. The mower has a alarm on it that sounds if there a loss in system pressure. So he immediateily stopped and backed off the green. we flushed the oil off the green with water. The damage with hydraulic oil leak is not the oil, but the heat of the oil, it burns the turf. So there will be a strip about 6 inches by 4 feet on the edge of the green. Damage is always hard to determine this time of year since the turf is not growing that much.We have already topdressed it so, it will either fill in,or we will plug it with bent in april during some other scheduled green repair work.
