The wettest winter in Burstwick’s 20 year history

What can we say about this weather we have been having recently? Not a lot really, other than that neither your or I can control it, and it’s affecting many industries - not just golf.

According to the Met Office, East Yorkshire receives just under 700mm of rain on in average year, and in 2022 we measured 784mm, so this was just above average.

2023 took a turn for the worse and we saw 1,253mm of rain (79% more), the most we have ever had in our 20 year history - and by a long shot!!

It’s the first year since we began where we have turned our irrigation off in July, and it never came back on again for the rest of the year. That is so out of the ordinary to us, in the 19 years before it we had never turned off the irrigation before the end of September.

From October onwards the rain has accelerated and we have seen areas of the course covered in water that we have never seen before. Burstwick Drain (which runs through the course), typically breaks it’s banks every 4-5 years, this winter it has broken it’s banks onto the golf course on four separate occasions! This, coupled with surrounding dykes being full to the brim has meant our drainage can’t do it’s job properly - you can’t push water up hill. We are planning to look at extra drainage and aeration in fairways in the coming years and this will be an ongoing task that we continue to work at.

We know that this winter has seen record course closures which is devastating for any golf club, but we are doing our very best to deal with the situation but it has been a very difficult few months to we would like to thank everyone for their patience! We can’t control what comes out of the sky but our lads working their hardest to keep the course in as good a condition as possible under the very demanding circumstances.