Melt Down! of sorts

I walked the course this morning to check out the conditions after a day of rain. We received 1.08 inches of rain yesterday and the temps have been above freezing for 24 hours. I checked all the greens for frost or whether or not they are frozen. You have to love the English language. We refer to a frozen dew, if you will, as frost and have delays until it melts (or finishes off your garden or summer annuals) and then as the ground freezes we refer to that as frost and usually in inches or feet. As in "when they dug the cellar hole for that house down the street there was a foot and a half of frost". Needless to say we still have frost in the ground. I could not get a screwdriver in the ground more than an 1/8" in most places. The only place I could get it in fully was the red tee on number two. The hearty souls are out there none the less enjoying a little fresh air.

practice putting green, notice the ski tracks of ice

nine fairway, ice foot prints

 

nine green all ice

As you can see in the pictures it is all about surface drainage and compaction. Where ever people compact the snow it turns to ice and sticks around longer adding to the chance it could do damage. It is obvious why skiers are frowned upon if they travel over the greens.

8 white tee. The hedge acts as a snow fence and captures lots of snow

7th green all ice

drain in the 7th approach, notice the ski tracks

four fwy from 5 green

two green



two fwy

Some of these puddles happen even in the warmer seasons but rain on frozen ground really moves and collects in some interesting places. Much of the ice shown in these pictures melted by the end of the day but I hope I illustrated the issues faced with winter traffic. The compacted snow can turn to ice either in a footprint or track from skiing or driving. Any ice has the potential for winter kill and some of our worst winter kill came from large puddles and the freeze thaw cycles on the edge or the entire saturated area. Lets keep our fingers crossed.