Update: May 15, 2010

After a relatively warm and dry April, the first half of May has been a little cool and wet.  Many golf courses flooded last Thursday, May 13th.  The average rainfall for May 1-13 is 1.5 inches and we have seen around 4.5 inches at Sugar Creek (WGN).  Areas north of us have seen even more. 

At Sugar Creek, we were fairly lucky.  The water rose on Thursday morning after the thunderstorms but receded by the end of the day.  With some modifications to our normal mowing schedule due to wet conditions, we were able to have the course in good shape on Friday for an outing. 

One of the mosts time consuming jobs after a thunderstorm is fixing sandtraps.  After a good downpour, the sand from the upper parts of the traps wash down and the traps are filled with water.  Drains in the sandtraps will remove the water eventually but not immediately.  To make the traps playable quickly, they need to be pumped, resculpted, and raked.

On Friday morning, our traps looked like this:

Or like this one that has already been pumped out:

Pumping, pushing up sand, and raking takes at least 2 people from 30 minutes to an hour per trap, depending on thier size.  It can take a couple days to restore the traps to thier usual state, or more like this:

Excessive rain also interupts our mowing schedule temporarily leading to some catch-up work when it dries out.  However, adjusting the mowing schedule is not nearly as time-consuming as sand trap restoration.