Snow - melt

Just like the rest of the country, this winter has been one of our snowiest and coldest in many years. We normally can play golf all year around here in the banana belt of northern ID, but this year we have been closed 42 days since Nov 1.

Recently we had 3" on last Thursday night, 3" on Friday night, and 4" on Saturday night.

Much needed moisture as the golf course was starting to get dry due to our dry fall and lack of rain

Expecting to be closed for another week or so was the feeling at the beginning of the week, then we got another interest phenomenon that happens around here and a warm chinook wind blew in from the south on Monday, coupled with a few small rain events and the course turned to complete slush and all the snow melted in 24 hours.

We kept a very close eye on the greens to see if we needed to squeegee and remove water from the greens as the snow was melting to prevent any water/slush from standing on the greens overnight and freezing, causing damage to the turf.  Things are very sensitive when you have free water sitting on the green.  Crown hydration, which is when the plant absorbs free water, the water expands when it freezes, and leads to rupturing of the cell wall.  This can happen in one night and could kill the plant if it froze that night.  Fortunately our night time temperatures have stayed above freezing so our turf is doing well.
The next day brought lots of water sitting on frozen ground due to the single digit lows and hi's near 15 that we had for 4 days prior to the snow storms.  This frozen ground prevented the water from soaking in.

The last two days have been above 50, which pulled the frost out of the ground allowing the water to soak in and drain off.  The course is now open again and playing well.