Well, it has been and is cold here in the heartland. Excuse the non-metric units. After 2 days of single digits at night and teens during the day, I figure my former shallow pond would be ready for a little thin ice skating. I am the heaviest I've ever been, so pond depth is important on thin ice. These are ephemeral ponds, but there was a lot of rain so the level may be 2 feet higher than in December...so liable to be 3 or 4 feet deep in the middle. I walked out to the pond, and stepped on it, and it cracked and sagged..so I went to the other side and used the little car window brush to sweep off a coating of snow and look into the ice. I walked around near the bank and could feel and hear the ice settling beneath me. This is a stress/strength relation...kind of like the southern San Andreas fault...it's flexing but hanging in there.
So, I gave up and will try again today.

While driving to the pond I put on conservative talk radio for my amusement, and they had someone on who wanted people to call in if global warming was bothering them (in light of the cold). He alternated between saying there was not warming, and if there was warming, it is a good thing. I did not call in, but the thin ice was bothering me...it only got down to about 10 deg the night before and 6 deg this morning. The records for the date here are -26 F and -25 F, in 1899 and 1905. It would only take 1 night of that for some pond skating.

Again, people confuse weather with climate. Chris