Someone Stop The Wind!

I realize that the wind is pretty consistent in ND, but this last week has been pretty rough.  I honestly think the only calm period we had the entire week was on Wednesday morning.  Other than that, all day, all night, the wind has blown, pretty hard too.  We barely squeezed in some much needed fertilizer applications during the week, and also managed to get in the first spray application on the greens on that nice calm Wednesday morning.  There were two other spray apps I would have liked to have made this week, but the wind never gave us any more chances.

To couple with that, we got a skimpy .15" of rain on Monday evening, and totally missed any rain from the storms we were supposed to get last night.  Also, the 30 mph south winds with a high of 83 degrees on Thursday was a little extreme for early May.  We are already irrigating nightly amounts of water equivalent to what we would be using in August (about 200,000 gallons per night).  Some of the un-irrigated rough areas are already started to show drought stress.  We are starting to hit the peak time of the year where the temperatures are getting warm and there should be adequeate rainfall occuring to really get the turf in healthy shape and develop some really intense roots.  These warm temperatures are certainly a bonus, but without adequeate moisture in the soil it is still hard on the plant.  Lots of those rough areas were already dry from last fall, and now with what is turning into a dry spring they are going to have a hard time greening up and taking off.  We may end up saving a lot of money on diesel fuel from not having to mow as much rough this summer unless it starts raining soon...

Lastly, this persistent wind is making it almost impossible to keep the sand and seedlings on our new tee boxes moist during the day.  Sand makes a great growing medium for bentgrass in order to provide a firm, well drained surface.  However, getting seed to stay wet enough to germinate in sand is a task that requires almost constant watering.  When the wind is blowing 20-30mph all day, the sand dries out quick, even under our covers, and the irrigation heads are almost futile, seems like I end up watering more trees some afternoons. 

Irrigation blowing directly up into the atmosphere....

With that being said, if any of you have received an unintentional shot of water while you were out playing golf, I apologize.  I try hard to make sure I don't water anyone during the afternoons while trying to keep the new tees moist, but I know once or twice there has been a cart hiding behind a tree that I didn't see until I turned the heads on and drove away....