Sports on Ice Are Feeling Under the Weather

Forecasters say the fault lay with the jet stream. Instead of blowing frigidly in from the north, the dominant flow was more directly west to east, bringing along wetter, warmer, Pacific weather.

"Normal climate variability," a government forecaster called it.

People around here have called it other things.

"It's been a real brown winter. . . . Not good for anything," said David Emerson, a Laconia pilot who flies over Lake Winnipesaukee to check its ice conditions.

Because of the warmth, some snowmobiling trails have faded to bare ground, and at the Killington ski resort, cross-country skiers have been spotted around the downhill slopes -- refugees from the snow-poor regions below. But the best measure of the region's temperate winter might be lake ice, which requires cold, still weather to congeal properly.

In more frigid years along Lake Champlain, this ice can make a shelf 18 inches thick.

This year, "you couldn't find enough to put in a shot glass between here and New York," said Petty Officer Brad Hanson, second in command at the U.S. Coast Guard station in Burlington, which sits at the lake's widest and most ice-resistant section.

And even where there is ice, locals say, it's often too weak to support a person, much less a pickup truck or the fully equipped "bobhouses" that ice fishermen spend their time in.

That's bad enough if you're an ice fisherman. But it's worse if, like restaurateur George Jarvis, you do a good business making pizzas for delivery to shanties out on the lake.

"I don't think there's going to be any ice fishing this year," said Jarvis, whose restaurant is in the Champlain town of Port Henry, N.Y.

Across the region, everybody who depends on ice has had to make changes. At New Hampshire's International Mountain Climbing School, they're used to climbing on the giant blue icicles that form when waterfalls freeze. But now, in some places, the water's still falling.

"We have a lot of climbs that are just pouring water right now," said head guide Brad White.

As the warm days piled up, New Hampshire's stock-cars-on-ice race was postponed. The Lake Champlain Ice Fishing Championship was canceled altogether. And then, on Wednesday night, Meredith Rotary Club officials made the difficult decision to postpone their derby by a week. They said 75 percent of "Lake Winni" was still not safe for fishing.

Still, there was hope here: Real February weather was in the forecast.

"Cold air's going to come in next week," said Alan Nute, who owns a bait shop in Meredith. "It's only going to take one more cold snap," he said, to fix the ice.