Warmer winters shrinking Canada's outdoor skating season

Outdoor rinks have long been a staple of Canadian winters, but the seasons are getting shorter and less predictable with more warm spells making it difficult to maintain the ice and keep it open.

In every small municipality with its own outdoor rink, that ice surface is always a community hub of activity, says Craig Beaton.

As an operations manager for the Town of Diamond Valley, he maintains Foothill County's Scott Seaman Sports Rink, which has high demand for ice time from hockey players, figure skaters and kids of all ages. But as Canadian winters warm up over time, rink workers like Beaton are seeing skating seasons become shorter and more unpredictable.

On top of being popular community gathering spaces, outdoor rinks also make learning winter sports more accessible, and provide an outlet for physical activity during a time of year where that's more rare outdoors.

In fact, outdoor rinks are such a staple of Canadian life that the International Ice Hockey Federation estimates there are roughly 5,000 of them across the country.

But Beaton has noticed that increasingly sporadic weather patterns in the last 10 to 15 years have made his job more of a roller-coaster to keep winter ice surfaces open. That pressure has been magnified in recent seasons.

"We're becoming a little bit more aware of the challenges the last two, three years," Beaton said.

"We are experiencing more frequent shutdowns because of temperatures. Obviously, if the ice is too soft or starts cooling, we can't use it. So we have to shut it down."

The rink Beaton maintains has a roof and a refrigerated pad to help it better withstand volatile temperature shifts, and yet it still shut down a couple times last season due to warm air, before it closed for the season in February. 

Closing for the season before March used to be a rarity, Beaton said, but now it's more common. He also says he's noticed more chinooks in recent years, which have long been the biggest challenge outdoor rinks in southern Alberta face.

Doug Giles, a volunteer with the community association in Calgary's southwest neighbourhood of Braeside, has helped maintain that area's outdoor rink for five seasons, and he's always dealt with fickle weather. But in recent seasons, Giles has noticed even higher highs and lower lows — all during a shrinking skating season.

The sweet spot to set up the ice is between –7 and –17 C, Giles says. Warm spells and chinooks can create yellow blisters on the ice or turn sections of it to slush, and make it too difficult to make ice. But weather that's too cold can also make the ice too brittle.

The increasingly volatile temperature shifts frustrate Giles because of how he's seen the neighbourhood rely on the rink, and how he's seen people traveling to Calgary from out of town seek out his rink because of it's reputation for consistently good ice.

"As long as mother nature doesn't hold all the cards, which she normally does, we like to try to accommodate where we can." Giles said.