Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Turf Twister


Yesterday afternoon, I got out on the golf course and walked a few holes.  Here is an interesting phenomenon that occurred on #2 green.  You can see the snow formed a wavy pattern across the green... a very uniform pattern, I might add.  So, what caused this?

Answer: Last week, all of the greens were deep tine aerated with the air injection machine we purchased last year.  The tines penetrate the green 12" deep and fires an air blast that fractures the sand in all directions.  After the green was completed, the holes are left open, of course.  The warmer air that was under the green due to the higher soil temperatures is slowly exiting those holes.  When the snow started last Saturday night, the warm air coming out of the holes didn't allow snow to settle in proximity to the holes until the air temperature cooled enough.  However, snow did settle on the turf far enough away from the holes, resulting in this cool pattern of differing snow depths.  That would be my educated guess!