Warm Weather Delays Open For Hockey Rinks, Tubing Lifts

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) - Kids may be on winter break, but they're missing out on a lot of activities.

Our mild December means a lot of outdoor activities in Minneapolis have been put on hold.

Skating rinks across the city remain closed, and it could be a week or more before they're open.

The city needs ten straight days at 20 degrees or colder for the ice to freeze and Minneapolis's 47 rinks to become operational.

Minneapolis is doing its best to speed things up for skating and hockey enthusiasts: flooding what rinks they can in an effort to build an ice base.

"Normally our goal is to have them open before Minneapolis public schools go on winter break," Robin Smothers, with the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation board, said.

But what they really need is for winter to make an appearance.

"We are closing in now on two weeks behind," Smothers said. "So we're just hoping for colder weather and more snow [to] let the outdoor winter enthusiasts go at it."

It's not just the kids who are left waiting for the cold. The city's 300 broomball teams were supposed to begin play last week. With the start date up in the air, the park and recreation board is getting a lot of calls from eager broomballers.

"It's been upwards of ten to 15 calls a day and also on social media," Smothers said.

The city estimates the broomball teams will still have to wait until at least the first week of January.

At Theodore Wirth Park, Erika Schlager Dos Santos and cousins Zephyr and Sketch found their own patch of winter.

There isn't enough snow to open the tubing lift on the main hill, so they improvised--hiking up the short snow-covered portion of the slope and sledding down.

"We expected the country to gradually become whiter as we drove and that didn't happen," Erika Schlager Dos Santos, who was visiting for the holiday, said.