Threat of lightning cancels Bloomington 4th of July parade, but not downtown red-tailed hawk
Bloomington’s Fourth of July parade has been canceled, due to the threat of lightning.
The map from LightningMaps.org at 8:15 a.m. on Thursday morning showed an angry line of red and yellow dots arcing from St. Louis to Louisville, which looked like it would eventually move through Bloomington.
The National Weather Service forecast for Bloomington called for heavy rain and thunderstorms before 3 p.m. The NWS put the chance of rain at 90-percent.
If the forecast had just been for rain and not thunderstorms, the parade would have been held. That’s according to Leslie Brinson, who is Bloomington’s community event manager for parks and recreation.
It was around 7:45 a.m. when The B Square spoke with Brinson, who was posted at the parking lot in front of Bloomington city hall on Morton Street.
She was there with a handful of other parks staff to let any parade entrants know about the cancellation, in case they had not received the email messages or seen social media postings. There were no entrants in sight.
Brinson said she made the decision to cancel the parade in consultation with colleagues, adding that it was the hardest decision she’s ever had to make. Brinson said it was not the threat of rain, but rather lightning that led her to conclude it was best to cancel the event. She made the call around 6:45 a.m., Brinson said.
“We would have run it in the rain,” Brinson said. But she said having so many people out in the open with the possibility of lightning just doesn’t make sense.
Responding to a B Square question, Brinson said no decision has been made about the possibility of refunding the $30 entry fee paid by parade entrants. That’s a conversation for Friday, she said.
The city’s webpage for the Fourth of July parade lists 59 entries this year.
Brinson said the next day’s conversation might also include the possibility of rescheduling, but that would require discussion with several other entities, including the city’s department of public works. If a rescheduled parade were held, Brinson said it would likely not be called the Fourth of July parade.
[Updated July 11, 2024. The city has issued a news release, on July 11, announcing that the Fourth of July parade will not be rescheduled.]
The local raptor community is not included in the city’s distribution lists for notifications, which meant that around 7:30 a.m. a red-tailed hawk was perched on the WFHB antenna a block south of the courthouse square.
The hawk flew off to take up a post on the dome of the Monroe County courthouse dome—which would have been a good spot to watch the parade head down College Avenue, across Kirkwood Avenue and then up Walnut Street.
After spotting a red-tailed hawk perched downtown on July 4 in 2022 and 2023, this marks the third year in a row that The B Square has documented a hawk in downtown Bloomington on Independence Day.
[Updated at 9:16 a.m. on July 4, 2024. Despite the parade cancellation, The Elks Club fish fry, at 8th and Walnut streets, is still on. It’s starts at 11 a.m.]
