I’ve found it quite interesting that say, a hundred miles south of one of the Ice Age glaciers, that it was temperate - it wasn’t frigidly cold as one might expect.
(1)Your altitude. The higher you went the colder it would be and the more persistent any glacier formation would be.
(2) Your latitude. The latitudes closest to the poles would be about 4 to 6 degrees F cooler than they are now YEAR ROUND. This would make any glaciers more persistent, and more precipitation would come as snow or ice than as rain.
(3) How close you were to the North American Ice Sheet. That ice sheet was plastic ~ ice flows ~ so it would regularly intrude into regions South, East and West of the central cold core areas. If the region happened to have a desert climate the glacier would simply sublimate away on the margins. If the region happened to have a temperate wet climate, the glacier would melt on the margins, and on the bottom. In the vicinity of Indianapolis, Indiana for most of the last glacial period there was no ice but you could travel 25 miles North of Monument Circle and there'd be the face of an ice sheet 2 miles deep.
It was as busy melting the last day of its existence as it was the first day it got that far South.
The reason is that the area from the confluence of the Great Lakes in the North down to about Bloomington, Indiana is the narrowest thermocline on Earth. During the period of glaciation it was a bit narrower. You could travel from Paducah Kentucky on the Ohio where it was as temperate as modern St. Saint Marie to Kokomo Indiana where it was more like today's Baffin Island.
We know that the ice age climate Southwest of Indianapolis was desert-like ~ all you have to do is check out the depth of the iron dust inside the caves. Still, Mastadons (Columbians in fact) ate hardy just East of the desert ~ I presume the grass grew quite well from the water pouring off the glacier to the North. Once you got over to the Ohio State line it was nothing but wind blown loess for the next 250 miles. South into Kentucky and Tennessee there'd be great grasslands that extended more or less to the Appalachians, and then South to the Gulf Coast plain. East of the mountains there was a great grassy plain stretching out into what is now the ocean for about 200 miles ~ and as far, in spots, as 500 miles. This area extended up to modern Nova Scotia. Parts of that area were never covered by ice by any of the last 20 glaciations even though sea ice extended as far South as New York City all the way to Spain!