Storm Damage

It has been quite a month here at the Club weather wise.  Somebody turned on the rain and we can't seem to shut it off!  On Monday night we experienced one of the heaviest rains we have had in 10+ years, receiving almost 11" of rainfall in a 10 hour period.  We were one of the hardest areas hit around town.  We have also had almost 21" of rainfall for the entire month of May, and we are at roughly 45" of rain for the year to this point.  The average YEARLY rainfall in Houston is around 45" of rain, so we are well ahead of average, and that has made for some very wet conditions on our golf courses this year and especially in the month of May. 

 

I've included some pictures to show just how bad it actually got here.  For the most part it was just a lot of standing water in many areas as we did not have too much structural damage from the storms.  There were a lot of newly made lakes!  There were a number of large and small limbs from the trees to pick up as the winds blew through here pretty hard at one point.  We also lost 3-4 trees.  Debris was everywhere after the waters receded and required some cleanup work before we were able to mow anything.

 

#1 Pecan - creek on left side of hole completely full and well out of its banks all the way across the fairway

#2 Pecan - same creek in front of tees well out of its banks and flooding most of right side of hole

#9 Pecan - creek out of it banks and water backed up to around 150-200 yard range from green, and water up into bunker in front of the green

#12/13 Pecan - left of these holes - a new lake was created, cart path completely submerged

Bunkers obviously took a serious blow and will take a lot of work and repair to get them back to where they were.  There were a number of bunkers that were underwater from the nearby flooding areas, and these are the ones with the most damage.  Any time you get moving water going through a bunker you will encounter silt contamination that can mix with the sand and cause many long term issues.  This silt will mix in with the drainage and eventually clog up the bunkers.  Our practice after any rain is to go in and skim off the dirty material and dispose of it before we rake the bunkers.  This eliminates the possibility of that silt causing long term damage.  After 11" of rain this process is obviously magnified to a much larger extent.  Normal rain might include skimming off 2-5% of the surface area of the bunker, but after this heavy event in some cases it is 100% of the surface area that is effected.  That process will take time before we can push the sand back up on the edges.  Once we are finished we will come back and add new sand to replace what we have lost. While the bunkers are in this state we ask that you play them as ground under repair until you see the sand raked. 

 

Typical bunker damage - lots of silt contamination and sand washed down off of edges

The wet conditions also make it very difficult for us to do any mowing at all.  We have been battling all month trying to get caught up but the next rainfall slows us down.  There are some areas of the courses where we haven't been able to mow roughs for 3 weeks now.  We have started mowing some areas today and will continue mowing as long as it stays dry.  We raised the heights on all of our short grass areas so that we do not excessively scalp and further damage the turf.  It will take a few mowings to get caught up and back to normal heights.  It will be a tedious process as the grass is so tall, and it will require lots of blowing to get the surface clean again. 

 

#7/8 Pecan tunnel - as was the case with all tunnels, completely full and impassable

 The tunnels are obviously a large problem here at Sweetwater when flooding occurs.  As you can see from the photo above almost every tunnel was completely full of water.  Our built in sump pumps were not enough to keep up with 11" of rain.  We were able to pump all of them down on Pecan on Wednesday and will be working on Cypress today and Friday. 

 

It is hard to recover quickly from storm situations like we have faced this month, but we will be working as hard as we can to get conditions back to where they need to be.  It will take longer than normal to get all areas back playable as this was a major rain event that only happens every 5-10 years, but we will get there.  Your patience is appreciated during this time.