The Spring That Wasn't

I am seriously getting tired of blogging about snow, cold temperatures, snow, flooding, snow, shop projects, snow....

The latest winter storm dropped only about 4 or 5 wet inches of snow here in town, but as usual, the real problem was how much fell in the beginning of our watershed in Fargo and points south, where some areas received over a foot on snow that contained close to 2" of liquid equivalent.

This pathetic excuse of a season called spring is starting to get pretty old.  It started off in the middle of March, and in the last month has progressed from annoying, to frustrating, to angering, to now its just starting to seem like a joke!  Last year at this time we had been working on the course for a month already, had charged the irrigation system, and finished construction and seeding of 4 new tee boxes.

For this 3rd week of April we should be averaging daytime highs of about 55-57 degrees, and lows should be hovering at or slightly above the freezing point.  We have been stuck in the 30s and sometimes even 20s for the last few weeks now, for the entire year of 2013 we have now broken 40 twice (42 and 40).  The forecast for this week looks to continue our trend of daytime highs that are about 20 degrees below average.    I realize how much I am starting to sound like a broken record with weather data for the last month....

What really puts into perspective how late and cold this spring has been is the predicted flood crest date for the Red River.  From records that I have found, the latest spring crests of the Red that have been caused by snowmelt (as opposed to a later spring crest caused by heavy rains) is on April 26, which occurred in both 1979 and 1883.  It looks like data for the Red River in Grand Forks goes back to the early 1880's, so about 130 years of data.

2013 is shaping up to be the latest spring snowmelt flood by at least a week in over 130 years of data.  That is kind of scary.

Getting really tired of seeing this when I get to the shop in the morning.

Still a solid 3' tall berm of snow on the edge of the shop yard.

The staff is set and ready to go as soon as the snow melts.  I hired 2
additional guys this year to accommodate for the late start and the
extraordinary amount of work we have to get done in May.

Andy and I spent ANOTHER day in the shop going through flood supplies:
pumps, hoses, fittings, squeegees, shovels, waders, etc.  We end up splitting
up all of our supplies and equipment, half stay at the shop and the other half
get staged at the clubhouse.  We lose vehicle access to the shop
for a water level over 42'.

One of our largest efforts in fighting the effects of a large flood is getting the silt off the turf surface.  The most effective way of doing this is to wash the silt with a hose back into the flood water as it recedes off the fairways, tees, and greens.  It is a LOT of work hosing, squeegeeing, and shoveling all of this silt (not to mention horribly boring and filthy).  In the past we have just used hoses with nozzles on the end, requiring a line of workers to stand in place for hours at a time slowly blasting the turf canopy with water to get the silt out and washed back down into the flood waters.

I came up with the idea about a month ago to figure out a way to use a pressure washer to do some of this work for us.  I fabricated a contraption that utilizes 4 pressure washer nozzles mounted to a walk behind sprayer handle that is hooked up to a pressure washer with a 13 HP Honda motor and a 4000psi pump.  My hope is that this device will make washing silt significantly faster and more productive, essentially covering a 20" wide pass at a time instead of just a tiny area hit from the end of a single hose nozzle blast.  Not sure exactly how well it is going to work, but I have a feeling we will be finding out soon....