Not a postcard day in Palm Springs

Typically pictured with idyllic, ample sunshine and framed by august mountain backdrops, this actual August painted a different portrait in the Southern California desert.

In the waning days of summer, Hurricane Hilary – ultimately downgraded to Tropical Storm Hilary – pounded the golf-centric Coachella Valley with rainfall totals surpassed on just four other occasions since record-keeping began in the City of Palm Springs in 1893.

On an annual basis, the City Palm Springs averages 4.61 inches of rain. On Sunday, Aug. 20, 2023? According to The Desert Sun, nearly 20 percent of that annual rainfall total dropped upon the city in an hour’s time.

All told, Tropical Storm Hilary poured 3.18 inches of rain over Palm Springs in one day. Among the other eight desert cities encompassing the Coachella Valley region, the City of Palm Desert received a reported 3.82 inches, the City of Desert Hot Springs 3.55 and the City of La Quinta 3.24 inches.

In concert with the storm’s subsequent late afternoon and evening wind gusts reaching nearly 60 miles per hour as the rainfall began to quell, Hilary’s damage tally, according to Riverside County and reported further by the Sun, is estimated at over $126 million, with the majority of damage and ensuing costs occurring in the Coachella Valley.

A mere 11 days following Hilary, a thunderstorm of the monsoonal variety crashed the valley’s east-end rural communities to the tune of 3 more inches of rain, with portions of the region’s more densely populated areas receiving approximately a quarter inch to an inch of soak, coupled with earnest dust storms.

While Riverside County’s estimates categorize road/bridge damage and individual assistance efforts as sizable portions of the costs, the valley’s bounty of 121 golf courses were not spared. Dozens of courses suffered a ranging degree of damage, with some losing but a few trees and others the recipient of ails more severe.

Tee-up the rally    

Though the reported rainfall totals proved aberrant, desert golf course operators, agronomists and head superintendents are no strangers to weather extremes.

Nor are they wont to play the victim. Nor are they ill-prepared for the powers of Mother Nature.

Thunderbird Country Club in Rancho Mirage pairs its celebrated history with modern prescience. The-first 18-hole course in the desert, Thunderbird debuted in 1951 and would host the Ryder Cup just four years later; among the club’s legend, this is where the golf cart was born and the property moniker proved the namesake of the famed Ford model of the same name.

Along with the history, Thunderbird presents the layout and topography of having four holes play through the Whitewater Wash, with another hole that is susceptible to runoff from the highway adjacent.

“You always know something like this could happen, so you’ve got to be prepared for it,” Thunderbird superintendent Ben Vann says. “But you can never quite be prepared for the magnitude. Over this past winter, we had rain events happen four times, but we cleaned those up within a week’s time, no problem. Yet this, with Hilary, it was like taking all four of those winter storms and dumping it into one storm.”

In recent years, Thunderbird enjoyed a full renovation project with architect Tripp Davis. The work, according to Vann, included the benefits of myriad contingency conversations with the designer, along with the added asset of having an engineer assessing water flow and damage mitigation.

“You’ve got to have a plan beforehand,” Vann says. “Knowing the inevitability of something like this – even if it doesn’t happen in your lifetime – you have to be thinking ahead.  The result is a reaction which is automatic, instead of having to rethink everything.”

Between forethought and aftermath, Vann found his property well-armed for the inclement.

“I was most concerned about the amount of water, so I drained all of our lakes pre-storm so the water had a place to go, and the lakes wouldn’t overflow and flood anything,” Vann adds. “And even though we ended up with a lot more rain than I expected, we still came out all right.”

Having the right tools on-hand also provided a proactive push. 

“Pre-storm, my GM came up to me and asked if we should get a bulldozer in here, order one,” Vann says. “I told him that, from my time working on the East Coast in South Carolina, I’ve seen this a bunch of times, that these storms can veer away and we’re gonna’ end up wasting our money. But I ended up ordering the bulldozer before the storm, and it turned out to be one of the best things we could do. The storm was on a Sunday, and the equipment showed up the following Tuesday, so we just jumped right into the cleanup.”

From damage derived both discovery and potential benefit.

“The biggest part was the amount of material deposited in the wash, the amount of sand,” Vann says. “But this runoff material is actually beautiful; there are some rocks in it, but it’s some of the nicest material that I’ve seen come down the wash. And that actually helped us, in that we can use it to put some interesting shapes into the wash, to make the bottom channel slightly deeper to accept more water and hopefully hold more mud.”

And for the water weary desert?

“Now, we’re actually in a much better situation than we were a year ago, when I thought we were going to go into water rationing – that’s not happening now,” Vann adds. “The amount of water we got kinda’ brought us back to square again. I just happened to be the recipient of a lot of that water down the wash!”

Between timing and teamwork, valley properties galvanized around the cleanup.

PGA WEST in La Quinta, with its nine-course, public and private spread, is known as “The Western Home of Golf in America.” In concert with serving as host of the PGA Tour’s annual American Express, the properties are involved with a course-by-course improvement and restoration project (as detailed in the October 2022 issue). 

This summer, PGA WEST’s improvement work focused on the Mountain and Dunes Courses.

“We just rebuilt the greens over there (this past summer), but, short of one of the putting greens, they came out with no damage from the storm,” PGA WEST director of agronomy Brian Sullivan said in late September. “We did intend to reopen them earlier, but now what we’re doing is repairing any damage to bunkers and cart paths. Instead of reopening and then closing (for overseed) in a few weeks’ time, we decided to go to overseed earlier and then actually open it earlier. We’re trying to make it a better situation for ourselves. The Mountain and Dunes Courses, that’s one of the older properties, there’s not a lot of positive drainage from one part of the property to another. And those courses also get the water coming off the (Santa Rosa) mountain. So, we’re still pumping that stuff out.”

In hindsight, Sullivan reflects upon the sagacious decision to not “blowing bubbles” on his storm prep.

“Fortunately, there’s some specialty drainage equipment,” he says. “Over at the Mountain and Dunes, there’s a 30-foot pump we call ‘Big Red,’ and there are three of ‘em. We looked at those a few months ago and said, ‘Boy, I bet somebody needed those.’ In advance of Hilary, we decided on the spot – ‘Let’s get those ready.’ And that was a fortuitous choice; we’ve been using them ever since the storm.”

The cleanup effort at PGA WEST involved creatively using equipment (courtesy of PGA WEST).

Along with championing a community rally and cleanup teamwork from both the City of La Quinta and a neighboring club, Sullivan says the most revealing, if not impactful, result of a palpable weather event may be in learning which of your horses are true thoroughbreds.

“One of the positives is that when somebody has to save the barn, you find out who the firefighters are,” analogizes the agronomist. “Internally, we found out who some of the people are that you really wanna’ go to battle with. That was one of the most valuable lessons of all. These people are proud of what they’ve done, and when we reopen on November 1st, we’ll have a staff who knows they did their very best in spite of some odds against us. And, to me, that’s the fun part.”

At nearby SilverRock Resort in La Quinta, storm damage included ample mud on carts path (and some path damage), along with standing water on fairways and pathing. Additionally, most of the bunkers were either washed-out or water-filled, while Hilary downed 30 trees.

Aptly counted among the most popular municipal properties in SoCal (and itself a former rota co-host of the American Express), the Arnold Palmer-designed “Rock” received ample impact from both the tropical storm and subsequent monsoon.

“We received nearly 4 inches of rain from Hilary, and I break it down twofold,” SilverRock general manager Randy Duncan says. “Because there was a first wave of rain, that wasn’t really all that bad. But then the second wave hit us late in the afternoon, and that did the most damage. We’ve done quite a bit of drainage work over the years, so the golf course can withstand a pretty good amount of rain. However, getting 4 inches of rain in such a short time period, the system just isn’t capable of accommodating all that water.”

The property’s lauded Santa Rosa Mountain setting proves both beauty and beast.

“Our biggest challenge at SilverRock is the watershed we get off the mountains, which borders much of the property,” Duncan adds. “We’ve got large native areas which were designed to hold a lot of that water – which they did. But water coming off the mountain in such huge amounts, it just can’t accommodate that much.”

Akin to PGA WEST, an e pluribus unum approach at SilverRock proved paramount to recovery.

“Our crew worked really, really hard,” Duncan says. “It was all hands-on-deck, with guys from outside services helping the maintenance crew; we literally had everybody out there to get the course back to playability – which we did. We all have a sense of pride in this place. We all want what’s best for SilverRock. And if that means getting outside of your normal job, that’s what it means. And that commitment doesn’t surprise me, but I still have so much gratitude for that.”

And yet, Mother Nature isn’t concerned about kicking a course when it’s down.

“But then when we got back to normal, the monsoon rains hit us,” Duncan adds. “So, after that second storm, with all this damage in our native areas, we all kinda’ looked at each other and my superintendent said, ‘Let’s look at the long-term forecast,’ which we did, and it looked pretty good.”

With teamwork came the further tenet of malleability.

“So, we met with the city manager and recommended that we move up our overseeding dates by two weeks, which is what we ended up doing,” Duncan says. “We just felt like that was the best choice, just given all these factors. Had we gone with the original schedule, by the time we got the course back to where we wanted it, it would have been time to close down for our normal overseed schedule.”

With the considered risks of early overseeding, Mother Nature would seem to now be smiling upon SilverRock, and Duncan believes the nimble timing may derive actual benefits.

“We’re about eight or nine days removed, we’ve had ideal weather and great germination” he says at the close of September. “And we’re excited about the fall and upcoming peak season. I think the course is going to play better than ever. So far, knock on wood, this is one of the best overseeds I can remember and I’m hoping that’s the silver lining in all of this.”

Of course, whatever the forecast, whatever the rally, whatever the season, whatever the belief system, to borrow the Yiddish adage: “Man plans, and God laughs.”

It’s important that superintendents can as well.

“I’m a golf course superintendent; we worry 24 hours a day,” Sullivan says. “That’s why they pay us.”

Judd Spicer is a Palm Desert, California-based writer and senior Golf Course Industry contributor.