Let it rain! We’ll take every drop we can get - but with the extremely beneficial rainfall comes some operational challenges. You may have visited or driven by your favorite park to see the grass is high, weeds are present, and you may start to wonder… what the heck is going on.
Due to the amount of rain we’ve gotten over the last month, mowing operations have been delayed and even suspended at times. Access to facilities has been limited because saturated grass is not conducive to athletic events as it tears and damages turf plants and creates muddy conditions.
Some fun facts:
- The City and County of Broomfield (CCOB) had over 5.25 inches of rain during April/May of this year as compared to 2.5 inches for those same months last year.
- CCOB has 584 acres (that’s equal to 442 football fields) of manicured turfgrass located within parks, open lands and rights of way included in the weekly mowing program. This equates to 25,439,040 square feet of serviced area!
- CCOB also has 620 acres of enhanced native and rights of way that are mowed on a monthly basis April through October.
- The weekly turf mowing service the community is accustomed to, and staff is designed to accommodate, hasn’t been able to be accomplished because the grass has to dry, at least a little, and there just haven’t been enough days without rain this spring.
- Park Services saved approximately 50 million gallons of water during May as rainfall mostly replaced irrigation run times as compared to 2022.
- Turf grasses and even weeds can grow 4 to 6 inches in height per week during cool, rainy periods in Colorado.
Please be patient while work continues toward balancing mother nature’s work with our work. As a community we can all agree that having the additional moisture has been great and made everything very green. The CCOB crews are primed and ready to get caught up as soon as the rain slows!
Thank you for your patience and join us in our appreciation of all of this wonderful moisture!