Ice skating lovers hoping for higher chances of an Elfstedentocht tour between 11 Frisian cities this year will be disappointed. According to Wiebe Wieling, former chairman of the association charged with organising the legendary ice skating race, climate change could sound its death knell.

Wieling, the fourth chairman in history who did not run a single tour, said that a week of snow was actually terrible news if you want thick ice.

“If there’s snow, there’s no ice, so there will be no Elfstedentocht,” he said.

The race, which was last held in 1997, can only go ahead if there is a minimum ice thickness of 15cm across the whole route – something that has happened 15 times since 1909. But the weather is warming so rapidly that the chances are ever smaller, and 2024 was another record-breaking year.

“In 2012 there was almost enough for an edition but we had only 7cm to 8cm of ice in the south,” said Wieling. “Snow is terrible for ice. This weather is very bad news.”

In a cold snap that is not yet over, thousands of flights, bus services and trains have been cancelled, some municipalities have been criticised for failing to clear bike lanes and paths, and several flat roofs have collapsed under the weight of snow.

Hope

Hylke de Vries, climate scientist at the KNMI meteorological institute, said that much has to do with the wind in a country that has relatively mild winter temperatures because of the nearby North Sea. “It only gets bitterly cold if the wind turns northeast in winter,” he said.

“That usually means blue skies and very cold, icy conditions, and that may persist for a couple of weeks and then we can skate on the ice and everybody starts to hope for Elfstedentocht.”

But, he said, when the wind comes from the north or northwest, that can bring snow. “Only when the wind turns northerly, we get also this moisture coming in from the evaporating North Sea that might end up – if the upper air is cold enough – as snow in our region,” he said. “Unlike regions that are dominated by continental air flows, where snow is inevitable, here, we have to have it cold enough in the upper air and still moist enough to produce snow showers.”

According to the KNMI, in 1961, there was snow cover at De Bilt weather station for an average of 23 days a year, but now it is just three. De Vries has used its “future weather system” to model that with a three degree rise in average temperatures in the Netherlands, there may be hardly any snow at all.

“We just don’t have the winters that we had in the 20th century,” said Wieling, who ended his 20-year chairmanship of the Koningklijke Vereniging De Friesche Elf Steden last year. “In the war, in 1940, 1941 and 1942 we had three editions, but it started to freeze in November and went on till March. That has all gone and it’s only getting worse.”

But, he added, a nation of skaters should not lose all hope. “The chance of another edition is only getting smaller, but we need one,” he said. “It brings people together.”