Frozen Saxophone

Perhaps surprisingly Google’s search engine ranked this SOTW Forum thread as the highest of all Sax on the Web pages. “rs1sensen”, a long time SOTW member writes:

Yesterday I marched in some of the coldest weather I've ever had to deal with on a horn. Some of my pads were frozen shut. Others frozen open. A couple tone holes were almost sealed with ice, and there was some ice on the bottom of my horn. After the game, I carefully de-thawed the horn, dried everything off, and re-oiled my springs.
I tried to keep warm air going through the horn prior to playing, but it actually seemed to make things worse, as more and more ice would just form. I gave up on playing. What I did find interesting, is that about half of our section ran into the same problems, but the other half could play perfectly fine.
I have to give the dance team some credit, they did a performance before us and wore much less clothing than all of us!

Then there is follow-up discussion and helpful hints. Although the post is more than one year old, it seems to become current every winter.