To this point our winter weather has been nothing short of erratic, 60 degrees one day and 30 degrees with snow the next. We haven't had the extended snow cover we typically experience from December to January, which means we are handwatering greens with our water trailer one day, and shoveling snow the next. Winter desiccation can happen quite quickly with the strong winds common to the front range and without our irrigation system up and running, we are left to water with a 300 gallon tank mounted on a trailer. Many courses enjoy irrigation systems with frost free components, we aren't one of those courses. If we were to pressure up our irrigation system too early and get an extended cold snap, we could sustain a large amount of damage from freezing. On top of that, most sprinklers aren't really designed to operate under winter temperatures, o-rings shrink, springs are slower, and plastics are much more fragile. The point is, irrigating is far more challenging in the winter time than it is in the heat of the summertime, so the more snowcover we can maintain, the better.
