Winter city organizers looking to make the most of unseasonably warm temperatures

Sunshine and sloppy roads are causing concern for organizers of the Silver Skate Festival. CTV News Edmonton's Jeremy Thompson has the story.

Unseasonably warm weather in Edmonton has left residents basking in sunshine and all that comes with it – that is, sloppy roads, puddles and a threat to a winter festival staple.

The Silver Skate Festival is the city’s longest-running event of its kind. From Friday to Feb. 16, Sir Wilfrid Laurier Park turns into a family-friendly skating, snow-sculpting, arts and cultural celebration.

And while the arts and entertainment elements of the festival won’t be marred by spring-like weather, organizers say maintaining ice and snow has been a bit trickier with a warmer-than-usual February.

The City of Edmonton shut down all of its outdoor skating surfaces on Thursday due to soft ice. Wednesday ushered in a new high of 10.2 C in parts of the city.

“City teams will continue to assess the ice conditions daily and will reopen skating surfaces when it is safe to do so,” a spokesperson told CTV News Edmonton.

“With upcoming overnight temperatures forecasted to be below 0 C, we anticipate that these closures will be short in duration.”

Erin Diloreto, the executive producer of Silver Skate Festival, is also hopeful to get skating up and running sometime during the course of the event. For now, staff are working on mitigating the effects of the sun.

“When we place our ice and snow sculptures, our rule of thumb is north facing, hopefully in shade,” she said on Thursday. “We are tarping. Tarps are our friends.”

The festival also made their own snow using a gun from Snow Valley Ski Hill, another popular Edmonton destination seeing spring conditions earlier than usual.

“When it’s warm like this, it’s a little bit of extra people coming out,” said Alex Mickelson, the Snow Valley marketing manager. “We do have a lot of snow, both the snow we made at the start of the season and the snow we had falling earlier in January and December. So we’re in good shape.”

Mickelson added that, despite warmer-than-usual temperatures, staff is confident the ski hill will make it through to the end of the season.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Jeremy Thompson