Kelly Snyder and her children took advantage Tuesday of the Sylvania schools’ relatively early Christmas break to get some uncrowded ice time at the Ottawa Park ice rink on its season-opening day.
“No school, no work, time for fun, time for play,” Ms. Snyder said while sons Zachary, 10, and Luke, 8, and daughter Kensley, 5, finished getting ready to leave after their skating time, which coincided with a city news conference announcing the rink’s relatively early opening — at least compared to last winter, when it didn’t open until mid-January.
Kensley Snyder eagerly suggested to her Mom that the family could go skating on Christmas this year, but Ms. Snyder reminded her that they will be at her grandmother’s on Sunday. And besides that, Christmas Day is the one day next weekend the rink will be closed.
Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz used the occasion not only to trumpet the city’s new agreement with Sylvania Tam O’Shanter to manage the rink following a three-decade period of direct city oversight, but also to celebrate city crews’ rapid collection of nearly 90,000 cubic yards of leaves during a six-week period that ended last week.
Leaf collection is “is one of the core services of city government,” and the crews’ seven-days-per-week campaign appears to have been a record for the most leaves collected the fastest, the mayor said. A year ago, he said, the city collected only about 48,000 cubic yards of leaves and the pickup extended into January, if not February.
Helping this year’s effort, Mr. Kapszukiewicz said after the event, was fairly dry weather that included no early snows.
As of midnight Tuesday, just 0.4 inch of snow had fallen since July 1 at Eugene F. Kranz Toledo Express Airport, which was 4.8 inches below the 30-year rolling average and 3.4 inches less than last year.
Winter officially comes to Toledo at 4:48 p.m. Wednesday, when the Earth’s Northern Hemisphere will reach its maximum tilt away from the sun, and Toledo’s dearth of autumnal snow could abruptly reverse later this week.
Weather forecasters continued to warn of an impending storm that while uncertain as a local snowfall producer, they expect with high confidence to bring high winds and biting cold.
In a winter storm watch it posted Tuesday afternoon, the National Weather Service office in North Webster, Ind. advised of the potential for blizzard conditions even though the portion of its coverage area in northwest Ohio might only get a few inches of snow between its onset Thursday evening and its end early Saturday.
“Snow will be moderate to heavy at times late Thursday night through Friday,” the Indiana forecasters said. “Storm total snow amounts will be quite varied, exceeding 8 inches near Lake Michigan to a few inches in northwest Ohio. West winds could gust as high as 55 mph, and will cause significant blowing and drifting snow.”
As of Tuesday afternoon, no similar watch had been posted for the immediate Toledo area, which is covered by the weather service’s Cleveland office, or southeast Michigan. An outlook posted earlier in the day by the Cleveland office said the snow amount at any given location would depend on the storm’s precise track, but the cold and wind would occur no matter the snowfall amount.
City officials said installation of plows and other hardware to prepare city trucks for snow and ice patrols has been under way since leaf pickups ended Friday.
“We’re preparing our equipment. We don’t quite know what is coming at us just yet,” Jeremy Mikolajczyk, the Toledo Department of Transportation’s road and bridge maintenance commissioner, said at the Ottawa Park rink Tuesday morning.
And while many of the city’s street-crew workers were granted vacation time after last week’s conclusion of leaf collection, 12-hour shifts are likely to start Thursday night, depriving many of those employees of the long Christmas break that Dennis Kennedy, the city’s commissioner of urban beautification, said they deserve.
Mr. Kapszukiewicz said the decision to bring Tam O’Shanter back as the Ottawa Park rink’s manager after a roughly 30-year hiatus is based on a belief that while “the city owns a lot of neat things, it is not necessarily the best at operating them.”
The management change is expected to yield more ice time and better programming that should boost usage fourfold, the mayor said, and it will better allow capital improvements beyond the recent installation of a new chiller to keep the ice cold even in warmer weather.
The Ottawa rink was built in 1969 and is the only public, open-air ice rink in the region and, Mr. Kapszukiewicz said, possibly unique in Ohio.
Open skate is scheduled daily from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., but the rink will be closed on Christmas Day, said Mike Mankowski, the assistant general manager for programming at Tam O’Shanter, who promised an abundance of broomball and hockey programs for people of all ages and abilities there as well.
“We believe we can build on this jewel,” Mr. Mankowski said. “...Hockey and skating is for everyone, and we really want to grow the tradition here.”
The impending storm is expected to feature rain in the immediate Toledo area on Thursday, which otherwise would be a problem for the rink, but then is forecast to change over to snow Thursday night into Friday, possibly including a period of freezing rain. Forecasters expect a deep temperature drop Friday as intense Arctic air moves into the region, with high temperatures only in the teens expected on Saturday and Sunday and nighttime lows in the single digits above zero.
How much snow any particular place will get will depend on the storm’s precise track, the National Weather Service office in Cleveland said in an update it posted Tuesday morning.
Six of Toledo’s plow trucks will enter battle Thursday night emblazoned with snowplow names chosen in the city’s first-ever snowplow-naming contest. Most of the winning names are familiar from similar contests the Ohio Turnpike and the Ohio Department of Transportation have run in recent years, and include Ctrl+Salt+Delete, The Big LePlowski, Plowa-Bunga, Betty Whiteout, Sleet Happens, and the now inevitable Plowy McPlowface.
Mayor Kapszukiewicz said the city received more than 900 name suggestions from about 600 people, and 663 public votes were cast to determine the winners.
First Published December 20, 2022, 7:10 p.m.
