9am update Monday morning.  

91mm of rain in the 24 hours to 9am. It takes us to 325mm since it started raining on Friday night.  The water is draining away but now there have been some big falls upstream so there will be more water coming down the river which slows our drainage potential.  Most areas have dropped by about 300mm as can be seen on the track across 13W where you couldn't see the hazard pegs on Sunday afternoon but they were visible on Monday morning.  We have continued cleaning drains this morning to help the water keep moving.

13W track 5pm Sunday.

Same track 8am Monday.

  

Sunday March 21,  5pm update.  

72mm of rain since 9am takes us to just over 300mm since it started raining on Friday evening.  The river is still low so there is still a lot of water able to get off the courses.  Still not too much rain upstream so that works in our favour.  I would have serious doubts about any play being possible for tomorrow.

15R @ 5pm Sunday 21.  Almost back to square one.

12R Sunday afternoon.

11R looking back from the green.

16R Sunday afternoon. 

 

114mm of rain in the 24 hours to 9am Saturday morning has been followed by just shy of 120mm in the 23 hours since.  So despite a massive amount of water draining off the courses yesterday we are actually back to being a little worse off today.  But still the fact that upstream of the Tweed River haven't been getting the amount of rain we have means that the river is staying low and allowing us to drain quickly.  Or as fast as a virtually dead flat piece of land can.

Photos below are of 15R fairway yesterday morning and again at 5pm yesterday afternoon showing how much water had moved.  It is totally inundated again this morning so back to square one.

 

15R 8am Saturday March 20.

 

15R 5pm Saturday March 20.

 Saturday March 20 after 110mm of rain overnight!!

13R - one of the highest points on the courses.

15 River - literally.

2W.

17R.

18W.

13W.

The rain was so heavy that it washed the pebbles off the path at the rear of the practice nets!!

Extraordinary.

This weeks updated rain chart since December 1 with an additional 70mm for the past week which doesn't sound much but I have never seen the courses stay so wet, particularly the West.  It is normally one day behind the River for allowing carts but it is just sodden.  Lack of sun and wind hasn't helped.  Even the bunkers on the West have drained before the fairways.

And this is the week ahead apparently;

That is all - I'm over the rain!!

 

Well the rain just continues and it is really starting to affect not just our programs but actual turf health.  We have now recorded rainfall on 59 out of 102 days since December 1 and that means lots of cloudy days and very much reduced sunshine.  We haven't been as humid as locations like Cairns or SE Asia but they have similar light reduction due to their tropical climate and rainy growing season and is one of the reasons you won't find much 328 or even TifEagle on their greens, as those grasses need sunshine and plenty of it to be at their best.  We are still getting good leaf growth but most of the grass we have is starting to thin especially the shorter mown areas and particularly the shaded greens such as 2, 3, 5, 12 and 17R.  Below is a rain chart for our summer just gone and it's a staggering amount of rain.  Yes last year was worse but there were a couple of massive downpours / floods last year that boosted the total.  This year has just been relentless.

 

So 1168mm of rain since December 1 which is nearly 47 inches in the old scale which is pretty mind blowing and from the forecast there is more to come next week.  March so far with 230mm in the first twelve days has the courses, particularly the West, as wet as they could be without being flooded.  The lack of breeze and sunlight has really slowed down the drying process as well.

Thursday was so wet that even we were restricted in where we could drive and areas we could access so we took the opportunity to have ''carts on paths'' and edged the paths.  So they are all nicely trimmed and now we just need to get the carts back out on them.
 

Edged and waiting on 6R.

As I mentioned at the start the lack of sunlight and constant leaf wetness is not helping the fairways either as can be seen in the photos below.  The leaf and profile wetness has quite a bit of disease going rampant but the fairways are too wet to spray although given their size budget dictates that spraying is out of the question.  We have had this type of disease before and it will grow out and recover but it's not helpful when you are getting ready for winter and trying to take the turf in as healthy as possible.  We have a long low / no growth period in winter and lots and lots of golf planned so the turf needs to be ready for it.

Disease in the fairway at 2W.

And it doesn't help when you are as wet as we are and looking for growth that you get players doing this to the fairways, this time on 11R.  

Disappointing.

 

 

 

Wednesday and Thursday both had a 60% chance of 1 - 5mm they said.  127mm later and we were pretty much under water again.  It takes us to just shy of 500mm for the year thus far which in the old terms is twenty inches.  But that does pale in comparison to last year when we had 1251mm fall to March 6!!  The big advantage we had with this event is that there was virtually no rainfall inland so we only had to deal with what fell here and with some good low tides the water got away quite quickly.  We virtually lost two mowing days so we are way behind where we would like to be and there were many areas on Friday that we couldn't get to even if we could.  It did give us a chance to get all the sprinklers and valve boxes trimmed which is an enormous undertaking in itself so that's a positive.

And not so much on the course but a new roof was put on the fertiliser storage shed today.  It has been programmed to be done almost every week this year but has been dashed by rain.  Wet fertiliser is no good to anybody so it was a very necessary repair.  And a job that is similarly being interupted by rain is the spraying of the dams on 4/9W and 8W.  We employ a contractor who has a boat to spray these dams and the product needs to be on the surface dry for at least 36 hours if possible.  Every time he has been set to come in the rain has come through.

New roof coming up.