Divot Mix

"Rhythm is best expressed in any swing directed at a cigar stump or a dandelion head." - Grantland Rice

Weather and climate supercomputers debut

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has put into operation the newest generation of weather and climate supercomputers. Now, for the first time, the National Weather Service has three systems working together for the protection of life, property and the national economy in the United States and its territories. NOAA is an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

The three systems consist of a primary system (Blue), a research and development system (Red), and backup system (White). The primary and backup operating systems ensure a reliable delivery of operational weather and climate forecasts with no interruption in services. The research and development system accelerates the transition of new research results into the operational models and provides for a more rapid improvement of all forecast products delivered to the public and private sectors.

“Together, Red, White and Blue serve as a major component of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS),” said Conrad Lautenbacher, Ph.D., NOAA administrator. “The new system allows NOAA to keep pace with model development and current scientific breakthroughs to protect our communities and serve society's needs for weather, climate and water information.”

“Implementing improvements to numerical weather prediction capability and extending the lead time for extreme weather events requires increasing levels of computational power. Literally, we are going from making 450 billion calculations per second to 1.3 trillion calculations per second,” said David L. Johnson, director of the National Weather Service.

The increase in computing power gives NOAA the ability to run higher resolution models with more sophisticated applied physics and use these models in the prediction of potential severe and extreme weather events such as hurricanes, floods, tornadoes and winter storms.

Contact http://www.nws.noaa.gov.

Winterkill research group formed

A group of golf course superintendents in the Northeast, in conjunction with turf specialists from the University of Massachusetts, have begun a multi-year research effort to examine looking at one of the region's most pressing golf management issues – winterkill.

During the study, the group will attempt to identify specific factors leading to winter-related turfgrass injury, determine best autumn management practices for preventing winterkill, and evaluate the effectiveness of various types of greens covers.

“Traditionally, winterkill is something we'd experience to some degree every few years,” said Tedesco Country Club superintendent Peter Hasak, who is spearheading the project. “But during the winters of 2001, 2003 and 2004, the problem was very widespread, and many courses got hammered. So a bunch of us got together and decided that we needed a specific course of action to figure things out.”

Winterkill can be caused by a host of problems, including turfgrass fungi, ice damage, desiccation, and direct low-temperature kill. According to Mary Owen, one of the participating UMass turf specialists, the ability to correlate specific weather events with turfgrass injury will be an important aspect of the study.

“Our protocol will require that each superintendent monitor turf canopy temperatures and air temperatures using HOBO data loggers and send us turf samples on an ongoing basis,” she explains. “We will grow out grasses from the samples in our greenhouse and analyze the collected temperature data to assess mortality/survival rates of the samples.” Contact http://www.onsetcomp.com.

USGA championship sites reviewed

This year, the United States Golf Association's national championships will feature two players, Retief Goosen and Meg Mallon, vying for their third titles in the men's and women's U.S. Opens.

And three historic venues will be hosting USGA championships: Pinehurst Resort for the U.S. Open, Cherry Hills Country Club in Cherry Hills Village, Colo., for the U.S. Women's Open and Merion Golf Club in Ardmore, Pa., for the U.S. Amateur.

It will be a record 17th USGA event for Merion, the site of four previous U.S. Opens and five U.S. Amateurs, including Bob Jones' historic 1930 victory to complete the Grand Slam.

During the course of four months, beginning in June, USGA championships will be played in 13 states.

The U.S. Open kicks off the season June 16-19 as Goosen looks to join the elite company of only five players who have won more than two Opens--Bobby Jones, Willie Anderson, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus and Hale Irwin.

Mallon whose 14-years between titles is the longest in Women's Open history, could also join a group of five others with three or more championships. The others are Susie Maxwell Berning, Betsy Rawls, Hollis Stacy, Mickey Wright and Babe Zaharias.

For more on the 2005 championships, visit http://www.usga.org/news/2005/January/champprev.html . GCSAA Tournament Fact Sheets for each of the competitions will be available online as the events approach. To access the fact sheets, visit the GCSAA Media Room .