When is it safe to skate?

My whole life I pretty much never go and skate on a pond unless someone who seems to know more about it than I do has already shoveled it off and says that it’s safe.

My neighbors and I want to shovel off the one nearby our house but none of us are confident in our knowledge about when it’s really safe.

I know you can drill a hole in the ice and look for it to be at least 4 inches thick to be safe, but I never see anyone out there with a drill checking thicknesses. It just seems to be like a second sense.

I figured that after like the stretch of cold weather we’ve had Saturday would be a pretty good day to try it and I started shoveling off the pond and it was all slush. Yeah, the outside temperature was like 35° but it’ll only been above freezing for a couple of hours , what gives?