STANSBURY PARK, Tooele County — The first day of spring in Utah brought temperatures in the high 60s and sunshine.

For a Tooele man, it brought an unusually early opening day for his snow cone stand.

"I push the limits on it. If it's 55 and sunny, we're good to go," Ryan Struthwolf said.

Struthwolf is the owner of the Stansbury Shave Ice Shack in Tooele Country where he serves ice cream, cream topping and more than 35 flavors of snow cones.

Prior to this year, the earliest he'd opened the shack was April 28.

"And even that was pushing it," he said. "But this year it's just been perfect for it, being able to open up early."

Struthwolf posted his plans for a "pre-preseason" opening day to open on his Facebook page.

"Over 1,000 people saw it, and I think there was about 80 likes on it," he said. "Regular customers are like, 'This is the best thing I've heard all day.'"

Anecdotally, Struthwolf's cold treats have been in high demand, he said, and with warm temperatures in the forecast, he decided it was time to open shop.

And he's not the only seasonal business that's pushed up opening day.

Duane Call has owned Call's Drive-In in Brigham City for nearly 40 years. The drive-in is closed in the winter. This year, Call said he opened two weeks early.

"Usually I open the first Friday in March," he said. "The weather was nice."

Call jokes that he brought the winter back because on opening day it snowed.

"We had spring in February, and I brought (winter) back for the first part of March," he said.

But now that the weather has warmed back up, Call said business is good.

"Around here, people see when I open as a sign of spring," he said. "I hear that a lot."

Travis Wilkins, owner of T&T yard care, said he got to work early this year.

"I've done a couple different style jobs," he said. "I've done some more landscape work that would typically be done later in the year."

Wilkins said the landscaping, which began in February, has been nice, but it has interfered with other work that needs to be done.

"This time of year we typically do aerating and fertilizer and stuff like that," he said. "So trying to throw other jobs on top of stuff that I'd normally do."

With such early warmth, Wilkins said he is worried about water in the warmer months.

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"My business is really kind of dependant on the water," he said. "I don't know what's going to happen."

Though it's just the first day of spring, Wilkins said it's already hot.

"I already got sunburned in March," he said. "Normally it doesn't happen until April."

Chris Newson, head professional for the Soldier Hollow Golf Course in Midway, said they opened March 12. It's their earliest open ever by five days.

"It's not that far outside the norm," he said. "Typically we get open in late March to early April anyway."

But Newson said the early opening has made it a little more difficult to hire employees.

"A lot of our staff is seasonal," he said. "They work winter jobs or they're not even in Utah because their snowbirding somewhere else. So that's left us a little short-handed on available staff."

It's also cut into their payroll budget for this time of year, he said.

"We're going to have to be more diligent about budgeting for payroll as the summer moves on," Newson said.

But there are also positives to opening earlier, especially with vacationers, he said.

"We've had a fair number of vacationers that had booked ski vacations," Newson said.

For now, Struthwolf said he's just open on weekends.

"I'm hoping that this warm weather just keeps going, because obviously it's good for business," he said.

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