It's not just the warmer weather that's prompting a warning about going out on the ice.

High River Fire Chief Cody Zebedee says anywhere where the water's running underneath the ice can be dangerous.

"The river ice is always changing, and we do see the depths of the water changing all the time and so we do urge people to stay off of those moving bodies of water," he says. "We still have ice on our storm ponds that is relatively thick, but we do also have some of our storm ponds that don't completely freeze over and pose a challenge with thin ice with water flowing in and out of those storm ponds as we see that melt happen from our roads and our streets and the water runoff."

He says the ice on some storm ponds can be relatively good, but others aren't so it's best to just avoid them.

"As temperatures warm up our ice does get thinner and again, we can never tell where the water is moving so you can move over two feet and there is lots of ice and you can move two feet in the other direction and there may be a spot where the ice isn't thick enough to hold up an individual."

He says in the past the fire department would go out and check the thickness of the ice on Emerson Lake but because of the differing conditions from one spot to another they stopped doing it quite a while ago, fearing it could give people a false sense of security.

"In behind Montrose on some sections of that Montrose storm pond there's spots that barely freeze over, like maybe two or three inches of ice at best," he explained. "Even at -20 there's some natural springs over there.

If you do see someone fall through the ice call 911 right away and stick around so you can help rescuers find the person.

"If you see someone go through the ice the best course of action is an early call to 911, provide the call taker with as much information as you have on location, clothing that they're wearing, etc. and try to remain there if you can and keep that visual contact with that individual so you can see if they moved, if they've gone under the ice and again providing that information to our dispatch centre is critical in that early 911 call, he says. "We caution people not to go out there and try and make that rescue and as opposed to having one or two victims we could just add more victims to the situation."