As a beer league hockey player, I am always interested in trying to get my pond ice in a good state for skating. This year has been troublesome! The first part of winter, we were low pool, but the ice surface was in decent shape, except for a very slow rise in water. This opened a gap in the ice around the perimeter of open water, while the center floated with nice 3-4” ice. Of course nobody wanted to play on that as the pucks would all be lost quickly. Plush it was sketchy near the edges.
Then we had a thaw, and the water level rose to full pool. It lifted my dock with it, and left that nice sheet of ice stranded 4’ out in the center. The ice melted enough that the 500lbs of concrete blocks pushed the dock back down at least.
Then it refroze to the edges, and was well ripened until we had a wind storm. That popped holes in the ice, and pumped water in and out of the holes with the wind. 5” of ice compromised by that wind storm! However, that resurfaced the ice into perfection when it finally refroze. Then we had 4” of fluffy snow, and the ice held up well. Nobody was able to come help shovel off a rink, but that appeared to be the one good day.
Then we got 18” of snow, and the weight pushed the ice downwards, and a lot of water flowed into the snow. The thin layer of snow left on top is excellent insulation, so it took a long time to refreeze. Now it is like frozen layer cake. Useless for skating, yet very thick, especially in the center. Last time I checked last weekend I stopped drilling a hole at 6” where previously there was no ice. It hasn’t gotten above 12 degrees since then.
It is the longest stretch of below 20F weather here since 1979 when Lake Ontario froze from shore to shore.
