Saw this posted on Facebook somewhere, but is an interesting idea. Paralleling data from climatologists who use data from weather stations across Canada, a group of geographers from a university in Ontario created a website for users to register their backyard rinks and then track the number of skating days in a given winter, presumably to map/chart winter weather trends.



From their website : "This prompted a group of geographers at Wilfrid Laurier University to create RinkWatch. We want Canadians from coast to coast to coast to tell us about their rinks. We want you to pin the location of your rink on our map, and then each winter record every day that you are able to skate on it. Think of it as your rink diary. We will gather up all the information from all the backyard rinks across Canada, and use it to track the changes in our climate. The RinkWatch website will give you regular updates on the results. You will be able to compare the number of skating days at your rink with rinks elsewhere in Canada, and find out who is having the best winter for skating this year."

Looks to me like they have at least a hundred or so rinks registered so far from Nova Scotia, as far south as Ohio, and all the way north/west to the Yukon.

I just registered and added my rink. Now that my rink is being used as an instrument to track regional climate change by a university, think I can take a tax deduction on my rink liner next year? :-)

Great idea! Thanks for the link. Heading there to register my rink right now and can't wait to see some of the results.

Kevin

Very cool! I'll throw mine on there and reach out to them about putting together a blog post. Thanks for the heads up!

Do they accept "Ponds"???

I would think 'ponds' would be more than accepted. If not, too bad for them! :-)

Hey! They do accept "Ponds"!. :)

Wish you could click on the pics to expand them to get a better view of what people are skating on. Have to post that into the forums.

(I checked out S. Wisconsin and saw a couple of ponds... Luke's maybe??)

Kevmac- Lukes Pond is the one I entered. If you hit the "+" button on that view, you can zoom in more to get a better look at it.

They also have a Twitter account - @RinkWatchOrg

Too funny...when I entered in my address and hit "satellite", the google maps satellite picture actually had my rink in it! Must have been from last year, since there's no snow.