Lack of rain is REALLY making things tough on the golf course. Our creeks are bone dry. You can walk right across them and maybe get your big toe wet somewhere. The pond that I irrigate the golf course is fed by said creek. I've slowly backed off my watering program when I saw the forecasts a couple weeks ago and from there out. I finally gave up on fairways all together (use too much water I don't have), and just watered greens and tees. Now ..... I'm trying to keep my greens alive. The rest of the place is burning up. I've had pumps up the creek pumping down holes to get water headed to my pond. Breaking down blockages in the creek to get flow going to my pond. There are no other options in the creek except rain. There's only one more pond from the course that I can pump down and fill my irrigation pond with. That will buy me 3 or 4 days of just watering greens. After that....... I'm DONE! 7 day forecast is low 80's to middle of week. High 80's towards end of week. 20% chance of an isolated shower saturday. I'm in trouble.
NY, I don't think you are alone in this category....SE Wisconsin is so dry........The courses here have got to be in the same predicament, with no rain in sight !
I feel for you NY. It's drier than all get out here too. I live East of Lake Ontario so we usually get some rain off the lake.... but not this year. I just have a dead or dieing lawn. It's your livelyhood. Sucks.
I live in SE WI and we are 4 inches behind in average rain fall for the year. Everything has truend brown. The grass is crunchy.
Hate to hear that for you and all the farmers that depend on the rain for their income. We are also in a terrible drought here. I planted 6000 trees this spring and would guess most of them are not going to make it now. Hope you get the rain you need soon!
WI Governor Walker Declares Drought Emergency in 42 WI counties. http://www.thewheelerreport.com/releases/July12/0709/0709walker.pdf
Don't forget about the poor fish in that creek you're pumping dry! We're going through the same thing here, creeks are so low you can't even get down them with a kayak.
I'm not pumping any creek dry for the poor fish. You can go 5 to 10 miles upstream and have the poor fish in the same situation whether I'm pumping water or not. I'll take my chances of losing a sucker or two in a runoff stream as to not loose a half million dollars worth of greens.
I hear ya in mass we had really wet late spring but now it's a full out drought with no rain in the forecast!!!!
NY... you actually have a chance of thundershowers about 5 days next week. Hope you get hammered and your ponds overflow.
40% chance sunday looks like the best bet. Of course that means 60% chance of no rain. Man oh man if I don't get some significant stuff falling out of the sky soon..... I'm done! Been about 2 miles upstream flipping over rocks, logs, little blockages along the way trying to get any kind of trickle/flow down to my pond. Bought me another night of keeping greens alive. Simply running out of places to even make water. 93 degrees today!
Southern WI was upgraded yesterday from a moderate to severe drought declaration. Crops like corn are now lost down here.
