December's warm weather has thrown a wrench into the City of Airdrie's plan to get outdoor rinks up and running this winter.

Archie Lang, Manager of Parks and Public Works, said the plan was originally to have the rinks ready for the beginning of December, but they are at the mercy of mother nature. The unseasonably warm weather in December has prevented the rinks to be established. Lang explained that with nightime lows sometimes sitting above zero, any ice has slowly melted away. Temperatures need to stay well below zero for the outdoor ice to be established.

"My longer term forecast that I'm looking at right now shows that we will be getting a little bit cooler as we get into the middle of next week, so hopefully it stays cool enough long enough that we can establish these rinks again."

Once the temperature does drop, Lang said there will be some work that needs to be done to get the rinks ready.

"On some of them we've kind of lost the snow bank on the outside, so they'll have to build the snow bank back up a little bit again. We have water trucks that go around and flood them daily, so they'll build the ice back up again a quarter inch at a time, and with some extended colder weather, within a couple weeks we'll be up and skating."

In the meantime, if you need to scratch that skating itch, Lang said there are some indoor options.

"We have that a few arenas in town and you can always go there and go skating, there's no doubt about that. I would not go out skating on any ponds, certainly not on the creek. Not until we've had some extended colder weather."

 

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