Skating in the streets
 

Amazing scenes these last days of ice skating in the street. This is Veendam, in the north.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zrw57UUMOys

Note that skating is in small residential streets - not larger ones that have more bike and car traffic.

Not sure this is a surprise - when we have enough snow there is always sledding and skiing in our city parks.

I saw a video on Facebook of someone skating in front of the Brandaris. Also this video of students in Groningen curling with beer crates :) https://www.facebook.com/gic.nl/videos/924354204307230

My son's ship has been a block of ice. He was supposed to move it to dry dock this week but has delayed it until the weekend.

The skating in the streets news has been around for a few days now.
Below is the latest update a Dutch Skating Marathon cancelled due to this ice!
http://nos.nl/artikel/2078928-schaat...egens-ijs.html

Yes it has been going on for a few days now, but it will all be over tomorrow, hopefully.

We had planned on visiting our son in Harlingen this week, before he moved to dry dock, but that trip will have to wait now until he has finished working on the ship, and is back at his normal moorings. Hopefully we can get up there then.

Yep, I need to get up to Ameland and I'm eyeing the weather too.

Hah, and I've still barely got the central heating on. Not that I relish winter, but I can't help wondering if we'll ever have one.

We always used to skate in the alley next to our house when I was a kid in Ohio in winter and thought that was normal, not amazing. Because the alley wasn't paved but dirt/gravel which kind of had troughs in it that would collect water. Even now, people go skiing down my street when it snows a lot, but I'm on a slight hill so it doesn't retain water for skating (thank goodness).

the point is: outdoor skating is a dutch obsession and we haven't had good ice for years. so it's funny to see how people made the most of this occasion. the skating desire must be fed!

Christina, you live in the US where cold winters are considerably colder than here, since you have a continental climate, not a maritime one, and ice rain is also more common.
The ice rain which enabled the street skating here was limited to just three provinces, whilst the rest of the country had temperature of around +6 to +10C.
It wasn't water collected in troughs, it was sheet ice, caused by frozen rain, and it covered everything, turning roads and pavements into ice rinks, and anything stationary into an ice cube. Motorways were all but closed because of it, since salt has little affect on it.
As it started to thaw yesterday people were in danger of being hit by falling ice.
One man slipped, fell, hit his head and died when walking his dog.