Kevin Fox thought the spring-like temperatures that had temporarily pushed the cold away from south-eastern Ontario meant a good day on for ice fishing, a popular winter pastime in the region.

After shifting location because the wind and ice “didn’t feel right” and the fish weren’t biting close to shore, he and a friend joined nearly two dozen others far out on a sheet of ice in Lake Huron. They followed the familiar routine of anyone who spends a day on the ice: they drilled holes, dropped their lines and waited.

Less than four hours after venturing on to the frozen lake, however, disaster struck. Fishers including Fox noticed they were moving – imperceptibly slowly, but enough that it was captured on their electronic devices.

Unseasonably warm weather and strong winds had helped detach a large piece of ice from the shores of Georgian Bay, stranding 23 people – including families – and prompting a dramatic rescue.

Despite strong winds, Ontario police were able to send two helicopters and one air ambulance to retrieve the stranded anglers in an operation on Sunday that took two hours.

Fox wrote on Facebook that the group decided to run toward one side of the bay in an attempt to escape back to land. But they soon realized the ice had already separated from the shore in that spot. At another section, they found the same result: the ice had sheared from the land.

As chasms replaced cracks in the ice, fear set in, survivors recalled.

“I just started screaming: the ice is opening. The ice is opening,” Alfie How, one of the fishers, told the Sun Times, a local newspaper.

Three members of the group tried to run towards shore but the ice around them fractured into smaller pieces, stranding them on open water.

“That’s when the reality of the situation really set in. We heard with the [strong] winds at one point they could not send a boat or helicopter. We honestly thought we were doomed,” he wrote.

“Some of the guys started making final phone calls to their families. It’s something I will never forget – seeing grown men crying while saying goodbye to the people they love.”

While some of the stranded anglers had floatation suits on, they knew the freezing waters would overwhelm them within minutes.

Eventually, helicopters arrived, first plucking the trio from a small piece of ice and then ferrying the other stranded people back to shore.

Fox says he and others took the necessary precautions to avoid a catastrophic outcome by monitoring the ice, winds and temperatures.

But police say that warm weather has notoriously unpredictable effects on ice, especially in large bodies of water.

“We’re really encouraging people here in our area to stay off the ice altogether. Stay away from the edges of waterways,” constable Craig Soldan of the Huron county Ontario provincial police told the Canadian Press.

“That includes rivers, ponds – any kind of bodies of water where you’ve got ice shelves, they’re breaking away.”

Soldan said the detachment has a motte: “No ice is safe ice.”