How low can you go?

The recent cold snaps have everyone staying inside to stay warm and cozy, but unfortunately we had to leave the golf course outside. Those couple of cold days really drove the soil temperature down to the point where almost all metabolic processes in the plant stop and the grass goes dormant.

Once the soil temperature drops to 55 degrees the plant starts becoming sleepy and wants to go dormant. As you can see in the picture below, for a short while, for couple of days the soil temps were in the 40's. The picture is of the information I get from a buried wireless soil monitoring device in the 15th green. The low temperatures are why the course looks a little off from the normal green we are used to seeing. The good news that as you can also see, the soil temps popped right back up after a few warm days. We just need it to stay warm for longer than a week between cold snaps so the place can green up again.