With the sunshine and warm temperatures hitting Airdrie this week, the city’s ice surfaces will soon be no more.

During the winter months, Airdrie’s Parks Department will check the ice thickness once a week, but now that’s no longer necessary.

“We actually stopped doing the checks now,” said Kevin Brinson, Team Lead for the Parks Department. “With the constant weather change and what we call soft ice, we don’t feel it’s safe enough to go on ourselves.”

Brinson said that during their last ice checks, the thickness was around 16 inches, but now that’s not the case.

“You can get ice pockets, you can get the soft ice, you can get insulation from snowfalls and then with the warm weather it creates kind of a blanket almost. It’s really unstable.”

With the weather clearing away the natural ice surfaces, Brinson said the same will be true for the temporary boarded rinks.

“Boarded rinks, because they have only 3 or 4 inches thick, a good day of sunshine with a wind can actually wipe them out.”

Right now there’s no timeline for when the boards will officially come down and Brinson said they can easily put them up if colder weather returns.

 

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