Courses Cleaning Up Today

It has been a rough few days for courses in the Chicagoland area.  We feel like NCC received our fair share of it, but reports from other courses show the weather certainly did not share fairly.  Rain totals for here at the club:
0.55 inches on Friday
2.50 inches early Saturday morning
1.25 inches over Saturday night
1.00 inch Sunday morning.

The immediate evidence from these storms is the rain washing out bunkers and a wet course.  Any damage from lightning may take a few days to find in the irrigation system or trees.

The weather channel is reporting a record breaking weekend of rain: Chicago's Weekend Rain Breaks Record

The pictures and reports from other courses have been awesome:

Winnetka Golf Club has closed until July 28th from over 7 inches of rain.

Biltmore Country Club reported over 6 inches of rain from Friday to Saturday.

Indian Hill Club didn't give a rain total, but does it matter when all of your bunkers look like this?

Ben McGargill from Wynstone Golf Club posted one of the most amazing pictures of a lightning strike I have seen.

Park Ridge Country Club has not updated their blog yet with photos.  They did say they do not know a total rain amount because their rain gauge was over flowing.

Today we will be fixing bunkers again.  We are waiting to mow fairways to allow them to dry more.  We are keeping our heavy equipment off the course until conditions are more suitable.

This the green side bunker on 7 Saturday morning.

This is the green side bunker on 7 this morning.  A few bunkers will be fixed today for the 3rd time in about 48 hours.

One issue we fear during hot weather is the presence of excess moisture.  We now have the excess moisture and do expect one area to show signs of it.  16 fairway will likely have a few patches that die from being underwater so long this weekend.  A similar thing happened last year.

Here is a picture taken last year on July 26th, after heavy rains on July 24, 2010.  The weather conditions this weekend were very similar to the weather conditions the same weekend last year.  We have had better spring growing conditions this year, and the temperatures were not has hot as they were last year.  Because of that, we hope to not see this result.  Other course may not be so lucky.