As June has come and gone, it is apparent that there will be no rebounding back to spring that we missed, unfortunately. Half of the days this month have been above 90 degrees with heat indexes well over 100 nearing 115 here at the end of the month. Not ideal for cool season grasses that in general optimum temperatures are from 60-75 degrees. Besides the elevated temperatures, rainfall has been scarce for the most part falling about 3" short of average for the month. Below are a set of pictures that reveal surface temperatures of a couple of greens and a fairway taken with an infrared thermometer about 2' from the ground. A couple of observations besides the fact that these temperatures are way too hot for cool season grass, is the changes before and after water applied and its residual temperature swings. Water was needed but a very temporary cooling affect was provided. In addition to some extreme surface temperatures, soil temps are rising quickly as well measuring around 96 degrees about 2" deep in the early afternoon. Needless to say, a very long summer awaits the course and hopefully an early arrival to fall is in the near future.
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| 17 green |
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| 17 green after applied water |
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| 17 green, 15 minutes after being watered |
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| 8 green at 2:00 pm |
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| 9 fairway at 2:00 pm |
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| 8 green soil temperature 2" deep 2:00 pm |
