Are backyard rinks a thing of the past in southwestern Ontario?

As the rain continues to fall this mid-February day across southwestern Ontario and temperatures rise to 10 and 12 C, backyard rink enthusiasts are questioning their ability to keep their passion alive this winter and into the future.

"It's too warm," Stephanie Borromeo, a London, Ont., mom of 10-year-old twins, said from her kitchen as she looked out at the water pooling on her backyard rink. "Sometimes at night, it looks like maybe we can go out and skate, but no.

"It ends up being a layer of slush. You just can't skate."

According to RinkWatch, which was launched by Wilfrid Laurier University researchers in 2013 to look at the long-term impacts of climate change on the skating conditions of outdoor rinks and ponds, they're indeed at risk.

I just remember tonnes and tonnes of snow — lots of sledding, skating. It's nothing like it used to be. This year's been really bad.- Stephanie Borromeo, London, Ont.

This is the third year Borromeo's family has built a rink for their kids, but because of a mostly mild winter, they've only skated on it five days this year.

It's not how Borromeo remembers it growing up in London.

"I just remember tonnes and tonnes of snow — lots of sledding, skating. It's nothing like it used to be. This year's been really bad," said Borromeo, who is still hopeful London could get another cold snap this winter.

Things really were different when you were a kid

"That's not false memories. That's really true," said Robert McLeman of RinkWatch, which describes itself as a citizen science research initiative that tracks winter weather conditions through backyard rinks across North America.

"We used to get cold, snowy winters," said McLeman, a professor of geography and environmental studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. "The winters were colder; they were longer. We skated outdoors for weeks on end."

In the years that RinkWatch has been gathering data from some 1,500 backyard rink enthusiasts, it's clear the fate of the outdoor rink is most at risk in southwestern Ontario, said McLeman.

"We have seen three winters kind of like this one, where it was really difficult to get a skating rink going in southwestern Ontario, and where the rinks got washed out in late January or early February."

For ideal rink conditions, temperatures need to be at –5 C and this winter, those days have been few and far between in southwestern Ontario, said McLeman.

The climate has been shifting in southwestern Ontario since the late 1990s, said McLeman.

And that's a trend that's likely to continue, he said.

"Unfortunately, the next 40 or 50 years, we're going to have more winters than not that are like this one where it's really frustrating or almost impossible to build a rink," he said.

"Apart from the West Coast, this will be the warmest part of Canada, and we're just not going to be able to build rinks the way we used to."

That just confirms what Natalie Edwards, a mom of two in London, has been thinking. It's the first year she's had a backyard rink in the winter, and it's already a big soupy mess.

Her kids — Bram, 8, and Walter, 5 — have been on the ice just once.

"I say every year I'm not sure we can do it here anymore, not unless you can cool it," said Edwards, who, for tradition's sake, hasn't given up trying.

"I guess we'll be doing it again next year just to try to get our money's worth."