Mother Nature is giving the warm shoulder to three cold-weather events scheduled this weekend in the Akron area.
Temperatures will flirt with the 60s for revelers accustomed to donning winter gear to watch folks plunge into the Portage Lakes for charity or gaze at works of art created from blocks of ice in Medina’s Square or stare down the snow leopards at the zoo.
While snowflakes help folks get into the mood for the annual Polar Bear Jump, Kelly Pariso, who helps organize the event that raises tens of thousands of dollars annually for charity, said warm temperatures do simplify some aspects of the rite of winter that started humbly some 14 years ago in his backyard.
This winter’s mild temperatures means the Portage Lakes are pretty much free of ice that measured some 14 inches thick in 2015 and required chain saws to cut up and trucks to pull out to clear room for the jumpers.
The warmest jump on record came last year, when the thermometer hit 61 degrees and some 700 or so souls took the plunge at Portage Lakes State Park in New Franklin. The coldest jump was 10 degrees in 2006.
The outside temperature should be warm Saturday afternoon, but the water temperature will still be a bone-chilling 40 degrees or so, Pariso said.
“This should be one of the warmest ones we’ve ever had,” he said. “If this is on your bucket list, this is the year to do it.”
This year’s event is raising money for the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank.
“We should have fewer people chicken out this year because it will be so warm outside,” he said.
The warm temperatures also should help attract a large crowd to Medina’s Ice Festival. The event starts Friday night with the setting of a tower of ice ablaze and continues Saturday and Sunday afternoons with carving competitions.
The festival kicks off with about 80 ice carvings put out on display Friday and more to be added, thanks to competitions Saturday and Sunday.
But organizer and master ice carver Aaron Costic warns the carvings won’t stick around too long in the warm weather.
As much as the heat is the enemy, Costic said, the sun’s rays also are a foe of ice carvings, first making them cloudy then fragile.
“Mother Nature is so powerful all you can do is work around her,” he said.
They will try to cover up some of the elaborate sculptures to protect them as much as possible, he said, but there’s only so much you can do with the spring-like weather expected over the weekend.
“I wish the carvings will be around longer,” he said. “But they will melt and that’s part of the cool part of this.”
Brian Mitchell, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Cleveland, said a warm jet stream is the reason for this unseasonably warm stretch of 50- to 60-degree weather that is expected to hang around into next week.
“There is still cold air well to the north, but it is just staying up there,” he said.
The average daily high for this time of the year should be in the upper 30s with lows in the 20s.
Those were the temperatures the Akron Zoo had in mind when it was planning its Some Like it Cold series of events that highlight a different cold-loving animal each Saturday in February.
This weekend, the snow leopard is to be highlighted with activities, a talk and even hot chocolate.
“We may have to rename our event Some Like it Hot and focus on animals like the Komodo dragon or macaws,” zoo spokesman David Barnhardt joked.
The program will forge ahead, he said, but the zoo shouldn’t have to turn on the heated rock inside the exhibit.
Craig Webb, who doesn’t mind the warmth, can be reached at cwebb@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3547.