When I first joined Syngenta I was in Scotland and saw a video of a course manager drop to him knees and kiss the ground to celebrate the rain they’d finally had.
Whilst many of us think of Scotland being wet, parts of the links coastline can be very dry where weather systems can completely miss them on occasion.
On the other hand I’ve seen many turf managers looking almost broken by consistently puddled greens, flooded fairways and bunkers.
We are all at the mercy of rainfall to a lesser or greater extent so checking in on the numbers from time to time is a good exercise.
The data is the same that powers the historical numbers in Turf Advisor.
The graph represents the cumulative (combined daily) rainfall in mm over recent years, against the dotted red line = the 10 year average.
So anything which is above the dotted line would be above average.
We can see here what we already know, that for Watford at least (and I’d say for most areas of the UK & Ireland) the tail end of 2023 had above average rainfall from late October onwards.
It’s really not just the total amount of rainfall in 2023 but the ‘density’ when it fell.
Trending along with the 10 year average for much of the year and then really pulling away in late October.
The orange line for comparison is 2022 a strong drought year.
2024
We can see in green is already pulling strongly above the 10 year average.
We’re yet to see how this year pans out. We could get a stop here, no further rainfall and be dryer overall than 2022.
But that scenario seems unlikely with rainfall predicted pretty much every day in the coming weeks for where I’m based in Cambridge.
Hopefully rainfall doesn’t continue at the current rate or drop off a cliff, but that perfect balance is hard to come by in the UK & Ireland unfortunately.
The steeper we see a climb on the graph the more intense the rain event.
I was visiting Celtic Manor in South Wales at the end of November 2022, and whilst it was a drought year as you can see in the Watford data there was a huge step up in rainfall at that time.
The affects of the rain events in that period were a huge additional burden on staff time.
Equally flat periods of the graph indicate prolonged periods without rain, possibly even droughts.
Like last years May & June with almost no rainfall.
That 2023 drought period was followed by heavy rainfall towards the end of July, just in time for the Open at Royal Liverpool unfortunately.
I did a blog on just how much rainfall they had during the event last year, tap here to see.
Each year is going to deliver a unique rainfall pattern, a classic case of the average hiding the details here, rainfall under a changing climate seems to be even more unpredictable so the only option for turf managers is to remain adaptable and react to each situation as it unfolds.
