Our recent warm and sunny weather has been a pleasant surprise for many of us; however, it’s led organizers of winter attractions to get creative or cancel.

The teams for the inaugural Carver Cup Ice Sculpting Competition should be about 20 hours into their masterpieces but they had to delay the kickoff until Friday because of the weather.

“The challenges here today are obviously the wind, the sun and the temperatures,” said Dan Howell, an ice sculptor who is working on a Viking garden gnome. “My job is to do all of these live demos, these very large pieces.”

While the actual carving competition, featuring 10 award-winning ice artists, was on pause for much of the day, the sculpting will happen a little later than planned.

“We weren’t originally going to provide them dry ice but just with us going above freezing, we brought in about 25 pounds of the dry ice for each team,” said Robert Harrell, CEO and founder of Minnesota Ice.

The sculptors are getting an extension to keep working until 3 a.m., with a winner being named Saturday.

Meanwhile, the Klondike Dog Derby, which normally brings 35 professional sled dog teams to Lake Minnetonka for a 40-mile race, was canceled due to a lack of snow.

Coordinators say this event is usually the biggest of the year for Excelsior.

“We get about 30,000 people who come to it,” said Dale Kurschner with media and communications for the event. “So it’s not just a downer for us, it’s also a downer for a lot of people.”

But the show will go on, with the dog derby’s first-ever live music series, featuring five bands in the tent at Maynard’s to hopefully help fund next year’s race.