Mother natures curve ball!

Following one of the wettest winters of consecutive rain days in history and our wettest winter ever, we hoped Mother Nature would be kind to us and give us (greenkeepers, farmers, gardeners etc) a great spring to help aid recovery to those winter scars but in true style she sent us one of the coldest springs I have ever known. 

Now, day time tempratures haven't been to bad I hear you cry but the amount of frosts and cold over night tempratures even into May has been unbelievable. 

To show how far behind our growth has been this year I compared two pictures below. These were taken in the same day and month but one year apart. Above is 2014 v 2015 below. The trees tell the story! 

I also looked at the GDD (growth degree days as mentioned in other blogs) rates and compared these until the end of April. 

As you can see our magic (growth) number in 2014 at the end of April was 383 compared to 151 this year. That's 232 less, meaning we were about six weeks behind. 

Luckily May has seen some good growth days but these are only averaging 4-5 days per week not yet at the full 7 days. 

Below is copy of our weather app reading for MHGC in April. This clearly shows night and day peak and troughs. 

Compare that to the end of May and you can see some good growth days but it's still abit unstable. 

So what does this mean for us... Well they are saying we are in for another El Niño, this is a weather phenomenon with one of its documented effects is to create a trough in the jet stream off the west coast of the U.S and this tends to cause the position of the jet stream to sit lower than normal during the deep winter months.  

You may also remember it was also one of the barmiest / balmiest October / November periods as we hit 20°C in late October / early November 2010, because we were sitting under a peak in the jet stream. 

So in other words October and November could be fantastic golfing months this year followed by a cold spell!! 

This means our aim is to complete the winter projects during this good spell and have everything ready before the weather turns. 

Anyway, I m getting ahead of myself at the moment. Just thought I would share with you a little weather update. 

The question is 'Has this stopped work being carried out on the course?'... Not a chance, instead we have been in over drive and playing Mother Nature at her own game as we look to force the course into spring. I will blog more about this next! 

Matt