Jennifer Brooks and her three young children hoped to hit the ice in front of Toronto City Hall on Christmas Eve.

But the mild temperatures on Thursday meant the ice was covered with a thin sheet of water and too soft for anyone to get their blades on.

“As we were coming up, the tears started,” Brooks said, as her daughter and two sons sat a looking glum on a bench next to Nathan Phillips Square.

It would have been her five-year-old daughter's first time skating on the ice.

“I figured that it would be a crapshoot, whether we'd be able to get on the ice today or not,” Brooks said. “But we thought we'd give it a shot.”

City workers spent the morning directing water towards a water pump at the normally busy rink. A sign said the rink is temporarily closed “due to soft ice conditions.”

The City of Toronto's website blamed “unseasonably warm weather” for the closure of several ice rinks.

“We continue to work to make the ice skatable and will re-open as soon as possible,” the website noted. “Due to the weather, closed rinks are not likely to re-open before Saturday, Dec. 26.”

You can thank warm American air for the very snow-free and mild Christmas we're having.

“You look out, and you're not sure what the season is,” said Environment Canada climatologist David Phillips.

Toronto has seen less than a centimetre of snow so far this December. By this time last year, 37 cm of snow had fallen.

This is the warmest start to winter in Toronto since records began in 1937, he said.

“There's no question about, this is El Nino, the Super El Nino,” Phillips said.

But don't fool yourselves into thinking winter is cancelled. The high on Monday is expected to be a chilly -5.

“There's going to be days where we wish we're somewhere else,” Phillips said. “We haven't cancelled winter, we've only postponed it per se.”