It is quite interesting the lengths that people are finding to go anymore to protect from winter damage. Often due to how hard it is to recover from it, many time not getting things back till late spring to early summer but some areas even later due to longer winters. I know hydronic systems are starting to be put in place, Southern Hills Country Club and Merion just recently put hydronic‘s in their greens giving them the ability to control soil temperatures by running water through tubes in the greens. Similar the heated floors. Granted those are more prominent clubs I doubt it becomes a common place throughout the golf course world but it is quite interesting. Recently a photo was shown on Twitter of Southern Hills country club after Tulsa got a blanket of snow and their greens were completely clear so, assuming they had the hydronics set to keep the soil temperatures up and no snow stuck to those surfaces.
I believe there is a direct correlation between climate change as well as the demands for green speeds. Once Superintendents push their greens to get speeds often the complete health of the turf is sacrificed due to abiotic and biotic stress only opening them up to some type of failure if dealt a curveball like weather. No longer are we seeing in some northern state climates winters where you get that early snowfall and it sticks around. Anymore, there are great fluctuations between precipitation and temperatures leading to more issues of ice accumulation. Once that happens the count starts as to how many days ice is present especially when dealing with Poa.
A recent golf course where I was director of grounds had issues with winter damage; some years none some years more and in 2010 we had significant winter damage therefore showing us we needed to take measures for the future. At that point we addressed; trees/shade, poor surface drainage, installation of subsurface drainage in our push up greens, and regrassed to a bentgrass giving us a grass that was basically bulletproof for weather on the North Shore of Chicago. I think often in the golf course market people are reluctant to be proactive due to cost and interruption of play to address items and set them up for success in the long term. Often it’s a sit n see mentality even though the signs are there.
The amazing thing about winterkill is just when you think you have it figured out something changes and it makes you think in a complete opposite direction. For the longest time people felt covers were the best protection even though sometimes covers can be the worst because water that sits between the cover and the turf can freeze and thaw often, therefore putting the turf into a bit of a head spin. It’s interesting to see some inventive ways that guys have gotten with the covers, see anything for straw to bubble wrap, you name it, at the end of the day everybody’s doing what they can to hopefully fend off winter damage.
I remember in 2010 when we had our damage; we had a heavy rain on Christmas Eve 2009, roughly an 1.5”, the day after it was in the teens, freezing all the standing water. Following the freeze we ended up with about 7 inches of snow on top of the ice. At that point the clock began, after 20 days we were out trying to break up the ice by using hand methods as well as a vibratory plate compactor which did a really good job of fracturing the ice. We made the decision to leave the ice in place because now gas exchange was able to take place and we didn’t want to open the turf up to the cold temperatures. Shortly after breaking up the ice[size=78%] we had a warm weekend which ended up melting all the ice and I think that was what really caused the damage, we lost the insulation on the turf that really wasn’t hardened off for winter opening up the lush Poa to very volatile temperature extremes.[/size]
[/size][size=78%]It sucks! Cause your basically having to sit and wait till things become active to really see what happens. [/size]