Rain, rain go away come again another day!

It's hard to remember a time when we’ve been so consistently wet. 

We knew 2012 was a wet year with 922mm of rain compared to 2013- 734mm (average at MHGC is 692mm, so not a million miles away but look above to see the patterns) but it's the end of December 2013 and the beginning of January 2014 to date, has been a none stop spell of high rainfall such as we haven’t seen since the winter of 2000/ 2001. 

Folllowing Novembers 66mm which allowed to us to finish the new tees it started raining on the 19th December bringing 123mm of rain until the end of the month and January so far at 160mm that's 283mm in one month!!! Or 11+ inches in old money!!! 

The reason this is happening is due to a wayward jet stream, this time it’s formed into a huge trough shape (see above) and this is doing two things-

1) Funnelling extremely cold air down from the Arctic to produce record snowfall and freezing temperatures in Canada and North America.

2) It’s pushing those low pressures diagonally up across the U.K instead of diagonally down, so the rain hits us in the south first.

283mm -That's a lot of water and we are seeing some problem areas around the course. The good news is this highlights future drainage plans and old areas that need renovating to preform back to there maximum. 

Clearing leaves from ends of pipes has been on going battle all winter and trying keep the ditches flowing. 

The area behind the 10th tee has had some work but getting access has been a problem but will investigate further to find out what is going on in the pipe, weather it's root or just debris restricting the flow. 

The rain has caused problems with the pathways and some have turned into a rivers! A lot of work will be required from the greenstaff to get these back into fit condition.(See below)

We are not taking any machinery (apart from hand mowers once a week) out on the course at the moment to protect the wet areas so all our work has been ditch, greens or woodland based.   

We have still been managing to cut the greens regularly

And it has allowed us to start some of the woodland work along with building the material storage bays. More to come on that. 

Finally- With most of the wildlife going into hibernation this week (six weeks late) we know this is the sign that the cold, hopefully dry snap is on its way. 

Matt