The recent warm weather has laid a beating on ice rinks across the city.
The temperature reached about 6C Wednesday and forced the city to close most of the outdoor rinks.
City Park’s Manager Paul Fayrick said they will leave 15 rinks open but only for boot hockey. He said the recent warmer weather has made the ice too soft for people to skate on.
“This is sort of the way we always are around March break,” Fayrick said.
“We’re always praying for cold weather and keep the rink operations right through the break but the weather isn’t very good right now. The ice is just too soft. The ice is in bad shape.”
But while most rinks are expected to close, the Marina Park ice rink is expected to last a while longer.
Fayrick said they have a system in place to keep the ice cold and added as long as the ice can freeze during the night people will be able to go for a skate.
“It has a refrigeration plant and we had a little bit of an upset (on Tuesday) where we were caught a little bit unawares on how that plant really operates when the suns out and it is warm,” he said.
“We’ve turned down the temperature and the ice tightened up really nicely. We’re going to learn over this winter and do some things different next year.”
With the temperature expected to reach above 10 degrees Celsius over the weekend, Fayrick said they will just have to watch the ice to see if it gets too soft to skate on.
He added as long as the ice can freeze overnight it should be alright to skate on.
