Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Storm Update

On June 27th at 5:00 we experienced a severe storm that moved through Forest Lake and surrounding areas.  Although the storm was short, the winds were extreme and we received over 2 inches of rainfall in about 30 minutes.  It has been almost 5 years since we have experienced a storm like this.  The club lost power service for 2 days.  On the course we lost 2 trees (a Basswood on #16, and a Little Leaf Linden in front of #18 green), and many branches that were scattered from corner to corner of the golf course.  Water from the storm created many ponds on fairways and roughs. Below are a few pictures from Thursday evening.

#16 fairway
#16 fairway from 15 Tee

Basswood #16
#9 fairway
#15 fairway
#18 green
#16/#17 Basswood row

Silver Maple #7
Power lines down across Club Drive
Friday morning the greens crew started working at cleaning up branches and removing the fallen trees, as well as fixing almost every sand trap on the course..

Cleanup begins!

Chipping branches
Fixing Bunker washouts
Most of the water found its way into the network of course drains.  The course remained open Friday for walkers and was opened for golf carts on Saturday morning.  We are still dealing with flooding in the driving range, (picture on right) because of the excess water from Forest Lake moving through the course.  Although Forest Lake will be draining for the next couple of weeks we should be able to catch up and remove the excess surface water.
Pond over flowing #2 cart path
New lake on the bottom of the range
Pumping excess water out of the driving range