Category: Weather

I’m going to be brave here and predict a dry down soon!!! There is no denying that since September weather conditions have been shocking for turf managers but it will turn at some point and it’s more likely than not we’ll soon be talking about how to manage turf under drought stress. Just a quick…

It goes without saying that Finland can get pretty cold during the winter. On my recent visit I was asked to have a look at the temperatures and comment on how I would build a disease management strategy. The below charts show days when we had days with periods below 3 degrees for a consecutive…

As we move into what seems like the first bit of cold weather for a while and I see the met office are forecasting some snow, I thought I’d put a quick reminder out of the benefits of using Medallion and pull out a couple of snow cover trials we’ve done. The Active Ingredient in…

In my last blogs I’ve written about dew point and 2018 v 2019. I have one thing left to go into before I give up on leaf moisture. The more time I spend looking at this, the more I believe it is the biggest driver of autumn disease pressure. Guttation Last time I spoke about…

In my last blog I spoke about the difference between 2018 and 2019. I looked at the amount of hours we had been in a “dewy” situation. This is a fairly simple thing to work out and it uses the Dew point figure I’ve seen in many forecasts and never really understood properly. Since I…

Disease pressure is a great phrase that most experienced course managers can instantly identify with but is quite tricky to explain – but I’ll have a go using 2018 v 2019. Without question disease pressure during last Autumn was significantly higher than this Autumn. But what are the drivers behind fuzz acceleration? What were the…

It’s been a while since I updated the river flow maps. The last one I did was September which was incredibly dry for most until the last week and it doesn’t feel like the rain has stopped since then. The beauty of these maps is they show how despite the whole of the UK being…

My last blog got me thinking – when is it normal to start seeing frosts. I’m fortunate enough to have access to some pretty snazzy weather models and one of them can pick out the historical data for predetermined weather criteria. So when have seen more than 4 hours of temperatures below one degree? Winchester…

We’re reaching that time of year when we start hoping for some decent frosts. A sustained period of cold weather will really help slow the progress of any Microdochium and it generally signals a period of drier weather too. Now assuming you’ve come through this Autumn with clean surfaces so far then cold weather is…

Talking to turf managers at the moment it’s clear to see that despite having a dry summer they are having to manage some very wet courses. I don’t think this has surprised many turf managers but its has caught a few members by surprise who were playing on very dry and firm surfaces one week…