Tornado Warning

Sometimes I don't know whether I am writing a golf blog or a weather blog. Certainly there has been a lot of focus on things of a meteorological nature this year.

Take this past Wednesday for example. As far as I can recall, this was our first tornado warning on a Men's Night. There were actually funnel clouds spotted in different communities throughout our region.

Around 3:30 - 4:00 pm, Shoal Lake was hammered with heavy precipitation, including hail, for about 15 minutes. During the deluge, I couldn't see the lake adjacent to my house. My road received 1.1 inches of rain in that time period. Shortly thereafter, I jumped on my cart and headed to the Club House.

When I arrived there were not many people around. I joined two guys to play a few practice holes. As we were about to hit our second shots on three, the sky opened up again. We picked up our balls and quickly found our way to the shelter on the rear of the maintenance shed. We stayed there until almost 6:15 pm.

Then something interesting happened. The clouds disappered and it suddenly was warm and sunny. The 24 guys who came to play had fairly good conditions for the round, with a few exceptions. My group started on #1 and were cruising along nicely until the sixth tee box. Suddenly, we could feel the pressure drop and saw dark clouds forming again to the west. We picked up our pace and finished the last three holes as fast as possible. As we putted on #9, a light rain started. That became a heavy downpour a few minutes later when we were inside our sheds. Some groups weren't so lucky, getting soaked because they were still playing.

I have not seen as much water on the course as was there on Wednesday. There was almost nowhere that was dry. There was a stream running in the low spot across #5 and #8 that was likely 8-10 feet wide at 4:30 pm. There were countless shots that hit fairways that were lost in newly-formed water hazards. The fourth hole was extremely saturated from the back tee well into the middle of the fairway. It was a mess.

On the golf side of things, it was a relatively successful evening. Joel Ostash did very well, getting the closest to the hole on both par 3's and splitting the $92.51 deuce pot with Robin Kimpinski. Skins went on four holes. Winners included Reegan Kominko/Ethan Hunter ($25.00 on #3, $60.01 on #6), Sean Blackbird/Jason Gorrell ($76.88 on #5), and Darren Ostash ($25.00 on #7).

Fast forward to today and we are still dealing with weather-related issues. There was a another storm last night which added more water to an already saturated nine holes. This resulted in a course closure for the day due to the grounds being too wet. I probably wouldn't be golfing anyway, given the wind gusts of over 70 km/hr. That wind likely was what caused a large tree to crack off onto our road. It looks fairly small in the picture but it took me a while to clear it away using a bow saw.

Normally I would look at the forecast and make positive comments about the expected weather for this Wednesday. I will forgo that this week because conditions have been so unpredictable as of late. If you are wondering what it will be like for our upcoming Men's Night, I recommend that you look at the sky at 6:20 pm, and hope that it stays reasonable for the next two hours.