It is January 15th and there have been exactly 0 days that Prince George’s Ice Oval has been open for skating this winter.
Up until early January, temperatures well above freezing prevented Ice Oval volunteers from even laying a foundation.
Then as soon as it did get cold outside, it got much too cold – which also froze progress.
“Right at the beginning of the transition to the cold snap we were able to get quite a few floods in, but that was only for one or two days,” Ice Oval Society President Kathy Lewis explained to My PG Now. “Then temperatures got too cold for us to flood.”
She said the coldest they can flood the oval without having to worry about deep cracks in the ice is -20.
Floods are expected to resume soon but a large snowfall is expected alongside the raise in temperature, which could cause further delay.
Lewis said it is still too soon to predict an official opening date.
Depending on the season, she said it takes “in the high hundreds” of volunteer hours to build the oval from start to finish.
If the oval were to be cemented and chilled, Lewis said that number would come down by “quite a lot.”
“We wouldn’t have to be rebuilding the base every time we have a thaw, and the oval would be available for skating much longer than it currently is,” she said. “We could have opened some time ago if we had refrigeration.”
The cost of the project would be in the millions, which Lewis recognizes is steep.
“Among all the other priorities the city has, it probably does not rank very high – but at some point we are going to have to have that conversation about whether we want to continue having outdoor skating in and accessible area or not.”
She said updates are posted regularly on the Ice Oval website, and assured people crews are working very hard to get the oval back open.
You can find their website here.
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