Earliest Holiday Parade
July 4th, 2009 at 12:30 am by Bill Steffen under Bill's Blog, Weather
The earliest Fourth of July parade isn’t the Hollyhock Parade in Grand Rapids (8:30 AM). It’s the Fourth of July parade in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. It begins at midnight and draws over 100,000 people. With an average high on July 4 of 86 degrees, I’m sure the marching bands, clowns and performers appreciate the cooler nighttime temperatures. This year they are celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
For those who have not been down to the Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg area if you get a chance to go ahead and stop in. Its sort of like a big Mackinaw area with tons of tourist trap shops (only much bigger) and warmer so no summer time coats needed.
On another early note even thought July is only 3 days old we are off to the coldest start to the month sense 2001. 2001 started off colder (average wise) but did warm up to be nearl average. Another note from 01 is that it started out colder BUT there were no days that had highs of less then 70°.
SlimJim
BTW good old Brett Anderson at accuweather in looking at the European long range weekly model now thinks that it will be cooler then average for maybe the whole month of July so may we dare say it may not hit 90 this month? Who knows its happened before. So lets say maybe 87, 88 the highest for the month?
SlimJim
all i know is i see a ton of rain headed our way for tomorrow from out west, i think it will be a rain out and cold day. all i have to say is we better have a darn warm winter to make up for this crap!
If I had the money I’d be going south. I’ve been to Gatlinburg several times during the fourth and stayed at a motel on East Parkway. The parade would go right by our motel. The parade usually lasts about an hour sometimes longer depending on how many floats they have.
I’ve gone by Knoxville a few times but I haven’t had the time or money though to stop. I want to go to Dollywood.