Winterkill potential

We missed the bad winterkill from last season that devastated many courses in New England, and other parts of the country. Hopefully we will again but we have had the perfect weather for such circumstances. The 14+ inches of rain in Nov and Dec set us up for soggy conditions. We continue to receive rain and it does not drain real fast as one would expect this time of year and after all that precipitation earlier, not to mention if the ground is frozen. We had a great weekend for pond skating so be sure to look at the new page (next to "our staff") where I have posted pictures and videos. Unfortunately, Monday we received almost an inch of rain and then by Tuesday morning we were below freezing again. A week of fluctuating temps and afternoon squalls has not helped. Yesterday it drizzled all day and the temperature was well below freezing so a light coating of ice covered everything. It is above freezing today so some stuff is melting but not much. Tomorrow's forecast is bitter cold and Sunday in the 40's. Hopefully we can get some melting and draining.
I am not much of an alarmist and there is very little I can do to change the weather and deal with flash freezes. Driving the course and seeing the puddles everywhere did give me serious deja vu from a decade ago. I was going to dig through the archives to show Chris but then remembered the display I created for the Board and membership showing the damage and recovery. So I took a picture of the picture. See the similarities in the pattern of the puddle on 4 fwy? This is the same on every fairway where there is a puddle.

 There is no guarantee that we will experience turf loss but seeing all this water and having these warm days and cold nights does leave a pit in my stomach. So you might ask yourself what can be done to avoid this? Simple answer is strip the sod, re-grade the fairway to remove the low areas and install internal drainage to take excess water away. Depending on how large the area the cost associated with such work is not so simple, however. Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope we won't be the ones dealing with dead grass this spring.

9 Pictures do not show how shiny/icy everything is.