A few more showers this week took us to over 400mm for November which makes it the wettest month of the year just eclipsing January when we had 393mm. That also takes us to 2400mm for the year or 2.4 metres!! The water table is very high so any amount of rain pretty much just tops us up. This location has been recording rainfall data since 1886 and more than 2000mm in a calendar year has only been recorded 27 times over all those years. Somewhat perhaps worryingly is that in the 14 years since 2010 there has been 2000mm+ 8 times!!
We had an issue with one of the old irrigation satellite locations at the rear of 9R green it is a location that we have had problems with over the years due to corrosion caused by its close proximity to the river. A group of solenoid wires had severe corrosion and caused them to stop operating the sprinklers. Unfortunately that group included all of 9R green, causing it to dry out to the point where there was virtually no moisture left in the profile. Fortunately we are now able to go to the older defunct satellites and scavenge some parts from them as the parts we require are no longer available. We were able to get to the green and get the moisture levels back to where they needed to be before we lost turf but it was touch and go to be honest. That has always been one of the issues with our old irrigation system in that you generally don't find out there is a problem with the system until you start losing turf. With the new system an alarm will alert us to any operational issues and we are able to run a diagnostic test every day which will also give us feedback as to operation.