April 16th, 2025

Hi All,

Well spring is in full swing with many facilities experiencing a really good start to the year courtesy of the dry, bright and sometimes warm weather we have experienced of late. And of course I envisage (hope) many more youngsters will be picking up a golf club after watching spellbound as Rory went from boom to bust and then boom again. I can't afford Sky TV, so I listened on the radio and it gave me such a bad nights sleep afterwards because I was so excited. Great sportsmanship from Justin Rose as well.

Over the last few days rainfall has also arrived across Ireland, the U.K and parts of Denmark but as usual once we get to this time of year it is a case of the 'haves' and the 'have nots'

Image courtesy of Netweather.tv

Yesterday, I was up early to get on the road for another installation and I flicked onto my rain radar. I was expecting it to be a wet drive but as you can see (2nd red triangle down), the rainfall was within touching distance but we received barely a millimetre. Just to the east, everything was rosy with a nice 10mm or so.

Ho Hum I am beginning to sound like a greenkeeper because the rain "Just went around us !" 😀😀

Welcome to the uncertainty that is the forecasting of summer rainfall.

The day before I watched a similar mass of rain fall over The South West and west of the U.K, but rather than move eastwards, it went north.

So currently there is a gap in the middle of the country where the rainfall for March AND April has been barely enough to wet the roads. I envisaged a situation where many greenkeepers and groundsmen / women had made treatments of fertiliser, wetting agent, etc to their un-irrigated outfield areas on the basis of a forecast of 10mm+ rain, only to see it disappear from the forecast and waltz on by. You have my sympathies. I had a flick through some Davis weather stations and noted their April 2025 rainfall m.t.d stats, here is a flavour of the have and have nots.... ;

Northampton 2.8mm Market Harborough 1.3mm Worcester 5.0mm Scarborough 7.0mm

Bracknell 12.0mm Sevenoaks 15.2mm Uckfield 17.6mm Bury St Edmunds 16.8mm

Watford 7.8mm Solihull 1.0mm Glasgow 22.2mm

Dublin 30.4mm Sligo 5.4mm Wexford 18.4mm Limerick 2.4mm

Silkeborg 4.0mm Odense 0.5mm Copenhagen 0.4mm 

So the west and east of the U.K picked up that rain, but the middle was left wanting. Uncharacteristically for Ireland, the east and south east is wetter than the west and north west from these stats and Denmark is just bone dry.

As I said in my last blog, it's great for business but when you see big clouds of dust blowing across the A5, you know some people are struggling. Spring crops around here are pitiful.

Nature seems to be enjoying it, lots more insects around vs. last spring, I cycled today and saw 7 species of Butterfly. Midges and buzzers abound by the reservoirs making a welcome mouthful for the few as yet Swallows and Martins that I have seen. I fly fish into dark nowadays and geez the number of Bats dive bombing my head has to be seen to be believed, super. That said we could do with some April showers dispersed more uniformly across our respective countries.

So is this likely I hear you say ?

I decided this week to post tropicaltidbits.com GFS projected weather and also rainfall in their respective animated GIF's so you can see how things are shaping up currently.

14-day GFS projection - tropicaltidbits.com

14-day GFS projection - tropicaltidbits.com (precipitation)

So if you are missing rainfall, I'd say don't panic because we still have some low pressure systems on the GFS outlook which may / may not bring you rain.

Over the run up to the Easter weekend, it looks like the west of the U.K and Ireland will pick up the bulk of the rain. Denmark may see some light rainfall over this same period to. For central areas like The Midlands, we will be lucky to pick up a shower. Now if things play out as currently projected, we may pick up a sunshine and showers theme on a westerly / south westerly airstream in the early part of next week. If this comes it means more rain for the west for sure but maybe some of that rain will push eastwards particularly as we approach the end of April. For me it looks like a typical April sunshine and showers type forecast for the west, with more in the way of drier weather for the east. Over this weekend we see a return to an easterly wind which means more in the way of cloud cover, a bit cooler as well, especially on Eastern coasts but in general temperatures will be typical for this time of year, sort of low teens territory. Then hopefully from Tuesday we see the wind swing round to the south west and that'll kick off more rainfall and unsettled conditions.

Agronomically we have a split sort of picture and it is entirely dependent on whether you got rain or not because if you got rain, you'll have plenty of growth, no moisture limitation and maybe you'll be looking to PGR things to hold them in place.

If you didn't get rain, it's a different picture, growth will be more hit and miss, some species will be lapping it up (Bentgrass) and others (Poa) will be hunkered down and moving into seeding mode. This makes life tricky because if your cutting height is up, bentgrass will get a bit broad-leaved, floppy and ungainly, whereas Poa will just be sitting there and not really moving. If you lay into it with a set of verticuts, it probably won't thank you for it, so light grooming, topdressing, brushing and a sensible cutting height would be my order of the day I think if you are waiting for the rainfall. If you have rain then growth will be more consistent and you can manage a little bit more aggressively I think, but bear in mind we are still in mid-April, so it is a while yet before we can expect night temperatures to stabilise and growth to do likewise.

Disease-wise, there's a little bit of Microdochium doing the rounds and despite the temperatures hitting the low twenties in Scotland last week, I don't think we were close enough to trigger Anthracnose activity (not symptoms but the initiation of fungal growth). So all good I think currently with the only recurring blot on the landscape being the activity of Leatherjacket grubs (especially after aeration) and the destruction caused by their predators, particularly Corvids.

OK, that's me for the week, I just wanted to give you a heads up before the Easter break, especially rainfall-wise and hopefully when I get round to typing my next blog, it'll be a more uniform picture across our respective countries. For this Easter it's going to be plenty of fishing, walking, a bit of cycling, motorcycling and some Danish baking as a relaxation aid. I am moving onto baking Knækbrød (Rye Crispreads) in a desperate attempt to be healthy :)

All the best.

Mark Hunt