Ice

Jason Weisberg missed the television broadcast of the regional figure skating contest in Laurel, where he earned third place and advanced to the next level of competition. The night it aired, he was in an ambulance on the way to an emergency room after being struck in the eye with a pellet from a BB gun. The accident last month at a friend's house cost the 14-year-old his chance to compete against the best skaters at the U.S. Figure Skating Association's Eastern sectionals in Lake Placid, N.Y. It also sidelined him from skating for a month and threw into question a promising future that could include the Olympics.

The nation's system for keeping planes flying safely in wintry weather is fundamentally flawed because pilots cannot determine at takeoff whether their planes are free of nearly invisible but potentially lethal ice, pilots and safety officials say.The system for preventing airline accidents as a result of icing has come under intense scrutiny following the crash Sunday of a USAir jet at New York's LaGuardia Airport. Icing of the wings is a prime suspect in the crash, which killed 27 people.

The toll of the winter storm climbed yesterday as a Howard County teenager died in a sledding accident and scores of others across the region jammed emergency rooms with weather-related injuries. Ryan Conley, 16, was sledding with his sister on their family's farm in Lisbon just before noon when he crashed into a tree, a Howard County fire spokesman said. Paramedics had to use ropes and pulleys attached to trees to reach the youth because the hill, estimated to be 1,000 feet long and a 40-degree incline, was covered in ice, the spokesman said.

He gathers the puck at center ice, fakes to his left and finds open terrain up the boards. Bill Wellington, a Detroit native who has played ice hockey since he was 5, calls to mind a forward for the NHL Red Wings as he shows the puck to one defender, snatches it from another, then lurches into the offensive zone, eyeing the enemy net for an opening that might change the game. With his bandy-legged gait, Wellington scares few with his speed, and his shot reminds no one of Brett Hull. But the "Golden Brett" should have his pluck.

ABOARD THE FRANK DREW - As commanding officer Dave Merrill piloted the 900-ton, black-hulled U.S. Coast Guard cutter up the Chesapeake Bay yesterday, he contemplated a world that resembled the South Pole: a wide expanse of glittering white, with its only boundary the pale blue horizon. "There's ice as far as you can see," said Merrill, whose rank is chief warrant officer. "It's hard to tell if we're in Baltimore or Antarctica." Merrill's cutter and others like it are working overtime this winter.

Take eight to 24 ice skaters in matching dresses and hairdos. Put them on a rink and have them skate fast, really fast, in technical synchronicity. Fancy footwork. Quick changes of directions. Formations like a marching band -- spinning wheels, V's, intersecting lines. They skate with arms locked together, a buddy system on ice, blades blazing within a breath of one another. One bad move and someone's going to hit the ice, or the wall, or fall and get run over. You've seen synchronized swimming.

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia - The wind was blowing, and the snow was blinding. That was when, last weekend, a village-size piece of the annual ice shelf in the Gulf of Finland broke free from shore, carrying about 200 terrified ice fishermen with it more than a mile into open water. Then the floe split in half, frightening the fishermen all the more. The icebreaker Semyon Dezhnev arrived to rescue most of the hapless anglers just in time. The rest were plucked from the ice by helicopter. All in all, it was a typical winter weekend on the Baltic coast, where ice fishermen are passionate enough about their punishing sport to risk drowning each time they venture onto the ice. Every winter, the open waters of the gulf and of nearby Lake Ladoga freeze over, creating shelves of ice that stretch miles from shore.

While Maryland motorists were preparing to battle snowy roads this weekend, U.S. Coast Guard officials in Baltimore were preparing for wintry traffic headaches of their own. Ice blanketing river channels and most of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal is making travel more difficult for barges delivering cargo to the port of Baltimore and fuel to the Eastern Shore. Two 65-foot Coast Guard cutters were expected to arrive today and Monday to join ice-breaking efforts. The Coast Guard's Portsmouth, Va., district has also put some of its larger buoy tenders on standby in case conditions worsen.

When Elizabeth Skora invited 14 of her friends to celebrate her 17th birthday recently at the Columbia Ice Rink, she said they were game to bundle up, brave the cold and try their skill at gliding on thin blades. "I used to skate, but I haven't really thought of it for a while," said the Catonsville resident. "We decided to mix it up a little bit." "They were so excited. I didn't think a bunch of teenagers would be excited," she added. In fact, hundreds of Columbia-area middle and high school students eagerly strap on skates and take to the ice Fridays for the weekly 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. sessions that offer blaring pop music (usually provided by a disc jockey)

The girl in the pink tights clatters across the ice with the swiftness of a Canada goose, the grace of a galloping stork. Alyssa Smith, 6, of Edgewater crashes into the endboards, slides down into a pile of snow and clambers to her feet, laughing. "She's never had a whole lot of fear," says her father, Richard Smith, who has brought Alyssa and her sister, Ashley, 11, to an outdoor rink in Annapolis for just the second ice-skating experience of their lives. "I have a feeling she can keep going for a while."