Friday, February 28, 2020

Well let's hope that's the end of the rain??  It has been unprecedented in volume and regularity with rainfall recorded on 31 out of the first 59 days of the year thus far.

The total for February (with one day to go of course) is 951mm or 38 inches in the old scale.  Not only is it a record for February, but it is the wettest month ever recorded at the Tweed Heads site since 1887.  You need to go back to February 1956 for the previous wettest when 898mm was recorded which just beat February 1954 with 883mm and that just beat February 1953 with 851mm.  1954 and 1956 were also the years of the ''big floods'' on the Tweed. 

Our year to date total is 1233mm (or 1.23 metres) after 282mm was recorded in January which well and truly eclipses the 962mm total for 2019.  There is still water standing in areas I have never seen before and the water table is literally full so the remaining water has virtually nowhere to go so is relying on evaporation to finally clear.

The upside of the rain is the lack of wear and tear on the courses due to low player numbers but the downside is the effect on the turf, particularly the greens, not to mention the Club's finances.  Low light intensity caused by the constant cloud cover affects the plants ability to grow and the constant leaf wetness provides the perfect host for a range of diseases which we have well and truly experienced, particularly in the greens.  Under these conditions 328 has the tendency to get ''puffy'' and the surface open up which is exactly what it is doing at the moment.  The West TifEagle greens are holding on much better and still providing a very true surface.

The rain chart below tells the story of 2020 so far.  But while we are getting all this, spare a thought for those in Western Australia, and particularly a friend of mine at Wembley golf in suburban Perth, who has had just 10mm of rain since the start of December 2019 and that was in a storm earlier this week.
2020's rainfall chart thus far!!

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