EASTON, Pa. – Memorial Day weekend showers did not cancel all events in the Lehigh Valley, but they sure did have an impact.<\/p>\n
Now that the sun is shining, a rather dreary and rainy holiday weekend is in the rear view-mirror.<\/p>\n
Despite the conditions, celebrations kicked off around the Lehigh Valley and organizers are talking about how the weather affected their attendance and finances.<\/p>\n
In Lehigh County, lines formed at The Mayfair Festival of the Arts at Cedar Crest College in Allentown.<\/p>\n
Visitors could be seen enjoying the festivities under cover, with raincoats and umbrellas. But organizers said the weather took a toll on the three-day long event, averaging sales to be down 43% from last year.<\/p>\n
In Northampton County, weekend-long events also transformed downtown Easton.<\/p>\n
The city hosted its annual Memorial Day Parade. Veterans, first responders and community leaders marched through the streets.<\/p>\n
The parade followed the sixth Easton Criterium the day before, featuring high-intensity professional and amateur cycling races.<\/p>\n
Easton Criterium Event Producer Kacey Lloyd said as long as lightning and thunder stays away, the show will go on.<\/p>\n
“It’s very unlikely that we would, that we would cancel an event, unless there’s some sort of really terrible natural disaster,” said Lloyd.<\/p>\n
Lloyd said the event brings in athletes from all over the country.<\/p>\n
“There are definitely some tourism dollars to be had. We know that our reach is mostly regional, like within a 30-minute drive in terms of our spectatorship.” said Lloyd.<\/p>\n
Greater Easton Development Partnership Special Events Manager Joe Dimeck said the rain did not stop folks from pouring into the events.<\/p>\n
“We had a pretty good line down Northampton Street,” said Dimeck. “That’s kind of what you hope for when you do events, is that people had a good time, and I think they did.”<\/p>\n
Officials in Easton said they are still working to gather exact numbers on the turnout for the events.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EASTON, Pa. – Memorial Day weekend showers did not cancel all events in the Lehigh Valley, but they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,12271,89589,2181,89588,157,77269,27412,6554,2822,7803],"class_list":["post-202915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-attendance","tag-cycling-race","tag-easton","tag-financial-impact","tag-lehigh-valley","tag-mayfair-festival-of-the-arts","tag-memorial-day","tag-parade","tag-rain","tag-tourism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}