Storm Cleanup

The storm that moved through Grand Forks on Monday evening brought wind gusts of close to 70mph and somewhere in the area of 2-3".  This was by far the most intense storm I have witnessed in my three years here so far.  However, after a brief survey of the damage on Tuesday morning at the course it didn't look quite as bad as I had anticipated.  I was thinking we would have massive, old cottonwoods down over the entire property.  As it turned out, we only lost one major cottonwood at the beginning of 18 fairway, a handful of smaller trees, and thousands of smaller branches.

The maintenance staff spent the entirety of the following day picking up branches, blowing and mulching leaves, and pumping water out of bunkers.

Also, with 2" of rain that fell in less than an hour, every bunker on the course was washed out, some much worse than others.  As of this point, 12 of our 48 bunkers have drainage in them, but that didn't stop how much the sand washed off the face, it just meant that we didn't have to pump them out.

Pushing the sand back up the face of the bunkers is a tedious task that requires a lot of precision.  It is very easy to dig too deep with the blade on the bunker rake and pull up chunks of clay, drainage rock, or drainage fabric, all of which are not very good scenarios, so it is a relatively slow process.  It will likely take us the rest of this week to finish pushing the sand back up the faces and repairing all of the bunkers.

The bunker by 15 green was one of the worst, but every bunker will still
need to have some sand pushed back up on the face.