and will be there for 2 more months.
Why would they pick Buffalo to put it in service? A lot of times they do that ceremony close to the place the ship is named for. Or even in the state the ship is named for. For example USS NC was commissioned in NC. Arkansas has no coast but it’s not all that far from the gulf coast.
It was built in Marinette, Wisconsin, on Lake Michigan, and did all its acceptance trials there. To get from Lake Michigan to open sea, it has to through Lake Erie and the St. Lawrence Seaway, very close to Buffalo. The previous USS Little Rock is part of a Naval museum in Buffalo, so presumably they thought it would be cool to commission it next to its namesake.
And it’s not really stuck “in” ice. It’s docked in Montreal due to ice in the St. Lawrence river.
Has the writer never left his home in the tropics?
It gets better. Next paragraph:
Breath doesn’t “billow” when its windy enough to blow snow sideways.
it does say the wind/snow started part way through the ceremony and that it went on for another hour.
I’ve seen the wind here go from a very light breeze to over 20 mph in less than an hour.
So does the entire crew have to stay on the ship for the next two or three months, or can they have a rotating skeleton crew and let most of them go back to the States for training or other duty?
Three months in the fleshpots of Montreal does sound like a pretty good draw, though. 
From the linked article:
I wonder if its aluminum construction, specifically its hull, has played a part in the decision to let it sit for a while.
It’s got a steel hull, but it’s built for speed, not ice-breaking…
And what role, exactly, do you think an aluminum hull—if it had one—would play in this decision?
I’m not being snarky or setting you up, I promise. I’m really curious about your line of thinking here.
There are those who question the survivability of the LCS ships based upon the use of aluminum vs. steel, which one would believe would better withstand combat. Needless to say, this is just speculation at this point, but I don’t think it is illogical.
I stand corrected on the hull.
But not during high winds because then you’d get hit by sideways snow if you stood on the hull.
They’re not battleships. Their hulls are built to withstand water, not direct heavy weapons fire. And regardless of material chosen, they would have decided on the thickness of the material needed to serve the mission requirements: An aluminum hull is probably thicker than a steel hull would have been, but might still be lighter.
Modern warships have very thick armor indeed: Their armor is a hundred-mile thickness of air.
Damn Yankees.
Seriously, if you had to be stuck somewhere you could do a lot worse than Montreal.
Thanks! (The article is pay-walled so I can’t read it.)
Weather forecast is that Montreal is likely to get an ice storm later this week.
Today. Ottawa just finished with snow yesterday with freezing rain overnight and into the morning. I woke to thunder and lightning in a snow storm - it was like living in Kingston again.
I liked the line as to its top speed (when not stuck in ice, that is!)
IIRC, the survivability issue with aluminum isn’t due to inferior strength under normal conditions. After all, pretty much any steel structure can be replaced with an aluminum structure with greater strength and lower weight. That should apply to hulls in any sea conditions, or even the initial blast from a high explosive.
The potential problems with aluminum are instead due to its lower melting and combustion temperatures. If a fire gets to far out of control, the structure of an aluminum ship can melt and literally add fuel to the fire.
(I have a vague recollection of a picture of a damaged modern warship, where melting of the structure is readily apparent. But either my memory or my google-fu is failing me this morning…)