A Brief History of 9 Green
Ice Development
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| November 13 First snow |
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| December 29 End result after rain event and the on set of a cold snap. Earlier snow has begun to form ice on the surface |
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| January 4 More snow, more rain, and more cold. Poor insulation from shallow snow cover is causing ice to set up "tighter" |
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| January 8 Ice thick enough that you need a shovel to chip ice to loosen it.
Not an ideal start to 2012 but it may be time to start thinking of golf again. Since my last post in mid-December course conditions and the weather have been somewhat variable. We've had rain, snow, lows of -18 Celsius, and highs of +8 Celsius. Over that time the snow has gone through a few changes as demonstrated by the above pictures. So now what? First look at "Winter Kill" a post I did back in 2009 for a quick and dirty refresher.
Ice isn't always the harbinger of death but it makes for some stressful times. The ice we are seeing now is fairly set up over frozen turf and is no thicker than 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch. Because I feel the turf entered winter somewhat prepared (versus 2009) it is my hope that the only thing this ice really means is we won't damage the surface if we decide to blow snow.
At the risk of stereo typing Poa annua (the predominant grass species throughout the entire golf course), the one thing to keep in mind is Poa a nice lookin' grass but it's not very smart. Any sign of spring like weather and Poa will burn up it's stored winter carbs and start prancing around like it's mid-June. Without the "antifreeze" like protection the carbohydrates offer even a small drop in temperature below 0 degrees could result in damage from crown dehydration (FYI: intracellular crown dehydration is the sudden freezing of fluid within plant tissue that draws water from cells dehydrating them and killing the turf; extracellular cellular crown dehydration happens the same way but ice forms outside the turf plant). Truthfully, however, I am not 100% sure of what to expect so I'll keep checking the green surface to monitor the ice development and keep doing the "smell test" to get a feel for what may be happening.
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