Warmer winter affects some winter activities

Our snowfall in the valleys is down a bit for this time of year and our temperatures are little warmer than usual. How is this affecting some winter events around the area?

“Let’s do a good kickoff and mother nature didn’t work with us too well,” PJ Holm, Recreation Superintendent for Idaho Falls, said. “And ended up making our ribbon into a little bit of a creek.”

We have been warmer than usual this winter with temperatures in the 30’s. It makes things like the planned opening for the ice ribbon yesterday hard to carry out.

“As we woke up in the morning and it was raining and continued to just get a little bit warmer,” Holm said. “We realized at that point that our opportunity was pretty much shot for yesterday.”

This is not the only thing being affected by the warmer season. The Ice Palace at Labelle Lake ran into a few issues this week.

“So the rain on Tuesday, rain in January that was great,” said Kira Martin, Manager of Ice Palace.

But that rain melted the tops of the ice and brought the water down.

“Part of the walls,” Martin said. “It thinned them out a lot and we’re going to go through and reinforce them.”

But that won’t stop them from welcoming the public to visit. They plan to reinforce the palace and use frozen tubes to stick into the structure.

“If we have one cold night where it’s in the teens,” Martin said. “Then it looks totally different the next day. Everything is thickened up and it doesn’t take very long. Just one night of cold temperatures and we’re good.”

The Annual Driggs Snowscapes is also feeling the warmth.

With lower snowpack, they now have to go to Alta, Wyoming to pick up truck loads of snow and bring them back down from the mountain to make sure the snow stomping tomorrow goes on without a hitch.