The Town of Okotoks was hit with a power outage last night, causing issues for numerous people.

According to Daniel Robinson, the Recreation and Programs manager for the Town of Okotoks, the power outage caused the ice at Centennial Arena to warm up.

"That disruption caused the system to turn off and with the warmer weather, that leads to the ground heating up the pads that maintains the ice," Robinson explains. "So, when staff arrived this morning at 6 a.m., they discovered and have been working to correct and get the system running."

Now they are just waiting for the refrigerant to freeze the ice and adhere to the pad.

"We expect it to be just a couple more hours here. We're hoping by 2 o'clock everything's open and available again for the afternoon."

Robinson says that even though the ice is still intact, they are ensuring that they get the slab temperatures back to within normal operating temperatures and making sure the ice is firm enough for people to skate on.

"With the warmer weather, the rainy weather, it goes quicker than if something happened in the winter."

Robinson says that this temporary closure may cause a bit of an inconvenience to some of the arena users, but they are doing their best to get the rink back open to the public.

The Gold arena at Centennial Arenas is currently being used for rentals, but due to the soft ice, the rentals have been notified and rescheduled for a later time.

The leisure ice rink is for drop-ins, and Robinson says to keep an eye on the Active Okotoks website to make sure the ice is ready to go before anyone heads down there to skate.