How do you prepare for the weather?

First, I'd like to welcome Maria Tomaso-Peterson to the blog. She posted the other day and you can catch it here if you missed it.

It's been a while since I have sat down and looked at the weather since I've been traveling, but I got a quick glimpse of what Megan, Jim, and Damon were referring to when I looked at the forecast for this upcoming week. According to weather.com's 5-day forecast, temps are going to peak Thursday through Saturday and everyone from Washington, D.C. along the coast and up to Boston are going to be hit with temperatures in the high 90's to over 100.

As we move into the heart of the summer, we have to watch out for the typical diseases such as brown patch, summer patch, Pythium and the like. After a good lesson that many golf course superintendents had last summer regarding how much their turf can be pushed and perhaps what to do to prepare, I decided to call out to those on twitter to ask the following:

"...how are you preparing for the upcoming weather. 140 or less."  

(for those of you losers not on twitter, '140 or less' refers to the number of characters you can type).  

 

As you can see from some of the posts, people find different things important, but a few things that stood out to me included the importance of irrigation, communication, and maybe a little prayer. Thanks to the following twits for helping (sorry if I missed yours): Greg Shaffer, Mike Jones, Bob Porter, Sam Green, and Ryan Cummings. If you're on twitter, be sure to follow these turfers.

Leave in the comments anything else YOU can add to the list of preparations prior to a major heat wave!

Regional Updates:
USGA Northeastern Update
USGA Mid-Atlantic Update

Weather forecast video

Colder than a witches...

...well you know the rest.  (Had to start with that as one of my former students at UConn heard it for the first time from her dad this past weekend).

Posting updates in the winter is a tough task as things are getting busier with conferences and classes start next week, but I wanted to at least provide a brief "weather report" for the region.  If you want to watch the real report, you can do so here.

Since talking about turf diseases is pretty much a bust in the Northeast region at this time of the year, I thought that I would revisit some things within the website that you may not be familiar with.  Here are some things that you may have missed...

1. Did you know that you can view images of turf diseases in our photo gallery?  Check it out here... or click on the camera logo at the top of the page.
   
2. Want to find out what turfgrass conferences are coming up?  Check it out here... or click on the calendar logo at the top of the page.
3. Have you missed some updates from GCSAA? If so, you can click on the GCSAA logo and get all the latest headlines from the various departments of GCSAA on the twitter feed.

Have you STILL not signed up for twitter?  Well, it's 2010 and I suggest you get with the times (or not)...either way, if you have an account, you can now follow turfdiseases or a group of others in the turf industry with one click (it may be 2 or 3, but who's counting).  Click below to follow more turfers...



OK, that's it for the first Monday of the new year.  As we progress through the year, please feel free to let us know how we can make the site better (by email or as a post in the comment...which ever works best for you).

GCSAA on Twitter