February has started off especially warm. Winter activities are feeling the heat.

Last weekend’s sunshine made for a pleasant walk for visitors to downtown Lake Geneva as they surveyed creations from the U.S. National Snow Sculpting Championship, part of the town’s annual Winterfest.

But for the sculptures themselves, it was a different story. Constructed over a two-day period late last week, the whimsical structures were starting to become dripping mounds of ice and snow Sunday in the afternoon sun as temperatures approached 40 degrees.

A Yeti eating spaghetti had lost his fork, while a first-place-finishing head of what appeared to be a cyborg lost much of its definition and detail by Sunday afternoon. By Wednesday, they were unrecognizable.

“It’s fleeting art, I like to say,” said Deanna Goodwin, vice president of marketing, communications and development for Visit Lake Geneva. “Here today, gone tomorrow.”

The festival, which typically draws 65,000 to 70,000 people, took extra precautions this year against Mother Nature, delaying the start of the competition by one day because of warmer temperatures. The sculptors started with large blocks or bricks of snow, wrapped in insulated blankets to keep them cold, and used sun screens to protect the sculptures from heat, Goodwin said.

There have been years when the pieces stay “frozen and beautiful for weeks,” and others, like last year, when the weather was cooperative until a “really warm, 50-degree day on Sunday,” she said. But this is the first year she’s seen these kinds of measures being taken to protect the snow.

“We were just amazed how well they did given the warm weather,” Goodwin said. “While the warm temperatures did affect the sculptures, it also brought out droves of people to see them, so it all worked out really well.”

Despite a deep freeze in January, warmer temperatures this winter have forced some event organizers who rely on colder temps to pivot as they try to make the most out of the brief windows of winter weather in the greater Chicago area. Some places, such as Norge Ski Club in Fox River Grove, can operate in a wide range of temperatures, but others that rely on ice and snow have struggled.

Utah-based winter entertainment company Ice Castles, which has set up an icy wonderland on the grounds of Geneva National Resort & Club in recent years, pivoted this season to the new Winter Realms experience featuring more light elements and snow. The event, which isn’t as reliant on ice, is the company’s effort to try to be “a little bit more weather resilient,” CEO Kyle Standifird said.

“For us, it’s just been how long will the weather allow us to stay open, but the demand for activities and people wanting to come out is still really high,” Standifird said. “We were sold out in Lake Geneva for the first four, five days, and weekends are typically sold out.”

The company, which has five other locations across the U.S., takes about an acre of land to build various ice and snow features with tunnels, lights, music, slides and more. Last year, Ice Castles stayed open for just one weekend in the Lake Geneva location, which is why Winter Realms was introduced this year, Standifird said.

On opening weekend in late January, temperatures hovered in the 30s, but it has since warmed up, reaching a high of nearly 50 last Friday in Lake Geneva, prompting some social media users to complain in recent days about slushy, muddy conditions and closed structures.

A high of 57 degrees was expected in Lake Geneva Thursday, but the forecast called for colder temperatures this weekend, with lows in the 20s at night, according to the National Weather Service.

The host site, Geneva National, received word Thursday afternoon that Winter Realms had been called off for the season, with Feb. 4 being the last day of operation, according to a front desk employee. Representatives for Winter Realms did not respond Thursday to inquiries from the Tribune, but posted on their Facebook page late Thursday afternoon that they were closed effective immediately.

“We are entirely weather-dependent,” Standifird told the Tribune as the season began. “The last three years we’ve just had ever-increasing challenges with the weather. Each year, we’ve tried to adapt and be able to withstand a few warm days, a few rainy days here and there. This year is when we made the biggest change and went heavy on the snow production and snow features to be able to withstand the warmer temperatures.”

Snow can withstand the warmer temperatures and the rain “quite a bit better than ice can,” Standifird said.

“It’s a bit of a risk every year because it costs the same to build something that can only be open for a week as opposed to something that can be open for two months, other than the labor costs,” he said. “We’ve been so well-received in this region that we’ve been willing to take that risk each year.”

Many outdoor event organizers in the area say they understand the unpredictability of the winter weather and are prepared for what Mother Nature has in store.

Like Ross Bruni, property manager of Maggie Daley Park, which during the winter season includes overseeing the ice skating ribbon. The ribbon traditionally will open for the season the Friday before Thanksgiving week and close sometime in March, depending on how quickly temperatures are warming up.

“We know what the winter looks like here in Chicago,” Bruni said. “It was typical Chicago weather this time around where it was 70 degrees a week before we opened and it was 35 the day we opened so we’re always ready for whatever Mother Nature throws at us.”

The cold snap over Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend, for example, had the ribbon shut down. During a holiday weekend like that, Bruni said the ribbon sees 10,000 to 11,000 skaters. Each day the ribbon has to be closed, especially through the mid-December to mid-January uptick, there’s between a $40,000 to $50,000 loss in revenue, he said.

“We generally work hard to stay open, but we understand the need to be cognizant of what the weather conditions are and how they’ll affect the safety of our staff and our patrons,” he said.

Snow can also be an issue for the ribbon, Bruni said, because of the unique characteristics of the quarter-mile skating feature, such as twists and turns, elevation changes and narrowing and widening areas, making it more difficult and time-consuming to clean and maintain.

When the winter days warm up, the ice stays cold due to chillers underneath the surface of the ribbon that keep the ground temperature around zero degrees.

“People are sometimes shocked that we’re able to stay open if it’s over 32 degrees,” Bruni said. “When we get into March, we’ll be open usually up to about 52 to 54 degrees. We can keep the integrity of the ice at that temperature as long as the sun isn’t beating down on us.”

Once March rolls around, Bruni said the ribbon team is looking at three-day or seven-day forecasts as their closing for the season is “very weather-dependent.” Last season was extended by a week because another cold snap hit around that time, he said.

While average monthly temperatures for January were in line with what’s normal for the Chicago area this time of year, February has been especially warm so far, with an average monthly high of 46.1 degrees and average low of 30.6 degrees through Feb. 7. Normal temperatures for February are a high of 32.5 degrees and low of 19 degrees, according to the weather service.

December was also on the warmer side, with an overall average monthly temperature of 39 degrees, compared with the normal of 30.5 degrees, weather service data showed.

Another activity heavily dependent on weather conditions is ice fishing. Johnny Wilkins, fishing guide with the Chicago Fishing School, said the activity has become increasingly popular as people want to go out and “be adventurous in the colder months,” and the best way to plan is by monitoring the weather and keeping safety in mind.

“Illinois is always weird for ice fishing, you get little windows in the Chicago area,” Wilkins said. “Last year wasn’t great for ice fishing, but almost every season is different. In general, it’s a short season, so if you get your opportunity, you go. You don’t wait.”

Wilkins takes people out for ice fishing in small groups and finds that inland ponds are the best spots where there’s a good amount of water that’s frozen over but the fish are still active. Once the water is frozen enough, it takes a particularly warm day up around 50 degrees to “really cut into the ice,” he said.

“We’re lucky if we can get on the ice right around Thanksgiving, but mostly it’s closer to Christmas for safer ice,” he said. “Then sometimes, we go into late March. I’ve been out on the ice first of April. It’s a constantly changing thing, and you just have to be aware of it and be a little flexible around our area.”

Wilkins said 2022 was a “poor year” because of warmer weather earlier in the season and conditions not becoming suitable for ice fishing until late January, while this season he got out on the ice in late December. He said ice fishing timelines are also “very lake-specific” because some years a certain body of water will be iced over enough by December and others it won’t be ready until January.

Up in Fox River Grove is the Norge Ski Club, which trains youth ski jumpers for Olympic-level competition. While ski jumping would seem to be best accomplished in idyllic winter weather, Scott Smith, president and operations manager, said it’s actually sometimes better in the warmer months.

“Believe it or not, we actually jump our jumps more in the summer than we do in the winter because of the snow situation,” Smith said. It’s much easier in the summer. All we have to do is turn on our sprinkling system to water down the plastic matting. The track itself is made of porcelain, and there’s really not much maintenance.”

The ski club uses plastic matting on all of its ski jumps in the summer, and all the other equipment stays the same. This emulates jumping in wintery conditions because “it’s just as fast and you fly just as far,” Smith said.

The summer ski jumping season at the club typically starts in May and will go until November, when the club shuts down to prepare the hills for the snow, Smith said, putting netting over the plastic matting. The winter season will last until mid-March, he said, when the hills get a break before the summer season starts again.

Whether there’s natural snowfall or not, Smith said the club is able to get snow on the ground with snowmaking machines that work better when the temperatures are lower, like 20 degrees or less.

“We made all of our snow during this last cold snap,” he said, referring to mid-January, when temperatures dropped well below zero in the Chicago area. “It’s about a five-, six-day process around the clock making snow.”

Even though the weather is out of their control, Smith said he prefers to have man-made snow over natural snowfall because “it’s better to pack and is better for the jumps.”

“This weather being up and down the way it’s been has been a challenge, honestly,” Smith said. “It does add a little extra work. You don’t just throw the snow down and ski. It’s a lot of grooming, a lot of handwork with rakes and shovels and stuff like that. But we always pull it off the best we can.”