Golf Course Update...March???

There is a lot of talk amongst the golf course industry about the effects of this historically long, snowy and bitterly cold winter. Here at HCC we have dealt with some ice formation on our greens since the rain event just prior to Christmas. We have snow blown our greens down to a manageable depth twice this winter. This allowed us to experience a very good melt during the sunny days and warmer temperatures last week. As of Tuesday, March 11th most of our greens were clear of snow and ice. There is still a few low lying pockets on some greens that have ice formation. However the ice that we saw was rather loose and "airy". We are hoping that this type of ice has not created any anaerobic conditions at the turf grass level. Anaerobic basically means that the plant cannot breathe because it is being smothered by an ice layer. We feel very optimistic about the condition of our greens at this point. Unfortunately we are not  out of the woods yet. During the transition between winter and spring the melting and refreezing of snow/water runoff can cause issues as well. Therefore, next week we will begin to snow blow and shovel any of the snow in areas that could potentially begin to melt and run on to our greens. Typically during the third week of March we are out removing covers from greens and beginning course clean up...not this year!
March is also the time of year when we begin the conversation about a timeline of the golf course opening. At this point we cannot even start this conversation until the snow has completely melted. This could be along way away, the forecast has the daily high temperatures just above freezing for the next 2 weeks. As we all know the weather can change dramatically in a short period...let's hope so!