El Niño Cleanup

A few weeks ago, Bernardo Heights Country Club recorded 4.35" of rain over a 72 hour period.  Much of that rain came down in a few short hours and made quite a mess throughout the golf course.  Our average annual rainfall is just over 10 inches, so collecting over a third of that amount in three days created some problems for the entire region.

January 8th,  #7 Fairway after 4.3 inches of rain

There is some good news, of course.  The mulch zones faired very well and require little cleanup.  Also, the greens received the flush of salts we've been waiting for since last winter.  We have been flushing the greens with well water into the first week of December to try to buy time until the rain started to fall.  The sodium is now back to manageable levels and should stay that way until mid-summer when we will have to start the flushing process once again.

January 20th, #7 Fairway

Our cleanup duties will continue for the next couple of weeks and I am very pleased with the efforts of our staff, working day in and day out with sore backs and shovels in hand.  Our first point of attention was cleaning the cartpaths from mud and sand so golfers could get around safely.  We then turned to bunker repair and completed that task in a week's time.

A few fairways became rivers during the storm after large drains were plugged with debris.  We have examined each drainage location and installed barriers to protect the drains from future problems.  The fairways that took on some sand are not severely damaged, just consider this an unscheduled topdressing.  We will continue to clean them and encourage the grass to peak through.  You can see how much better they are two weeks after the storm. 

New French drains on #5

We are now turning our attention towards the decomposed granite areas that need the sand redistributed and raked.  Nothing is broken out there, it just needs to be cleaned up.  We'll go spot by spot and day by day to get everything back in order. 

We will continue adding drainage wherever it is needed and I suspect we'll never run out of locations that could use more drainage.  We also will work with some soil stabilizers in areas we expect channels of water to form to prevent new erosion.

A little cleanup is to be expected every winter and a storm of this magnitude has the whole county using shovels, rakes, and brooms to tidy up.  The rain is certainly worth the trouble.