Will it rain on the Rose Parade? It sure looks that way.
Will it go on anyway? You betcha.
The 137th Rose Parade — an event famously established to show off Southern California’s mild winter weather — is set to kick off at 8 a.m. Thursday in Pasadena amid a wet winter storm that could result in the first rainy parade in two decades.
“There is a near 100 percent [chance] of a wet New Years Parade as well as the overnight hours leading up to it,” National Weather Service meteorologists wrote in a forecast report Tuesday.
Rose Parade officials — though they would rather not jinx it — say they are prepared for a soaking.
“At the Tournament of Roses, we try not to use that word,” David Eads, the organization’s chief executive, said in a statement. “History tells us the sun usually shows up right on time.”
In addition to traditional television broadcasters and other web-based streaming services, this year’s parade will, for the first time, be live-streamed on TikTok via the username @rose.parade.
“With this first-ever TikTok LIVE stream, we’re thrilled to invite a new generation of Parade fans to experience the magic of the Rose Parade from a fresh, creator-led lens,” Mark Leavens, president of the Tournament of Roses, said in a statement.
If you’re planning to attend in person, bring a poncho. View-blocking umbrellas are prohibited in parade grandstands and along the route.
Lisa Derderian, a spokeswoman for the City of Pasadena, said local officials are anticipating more calls for hypothermia and foot injuries from marching along the 5.5-mile route in wet socks.
Derderian said she expects an uptick in potentially dangerous warming bonfires, noting that “in the past, we’ve seen people that will throw firewood into a washing machine drum.” Each year, she said, officers drive the parade route, telling people to extinguish them.
Fires must be in professionally manufactured barbecues at least one foot off the ground and 25 feet feet from buildings and other combustibles, according to parade officials. A fire extinguisher must be readily available.
The parade is expected to last around two hours. Roads along the parade route that were closed Wednesday night, will reopen by 2 p.m. Thursday.
The parade begins on Orange Grove Boulevard, then turns east onto Colorado for the bulk of the trek before ending at Sierra Madre Boulevard.
Rain is forecast to reach the Los Angeles area between sunset on New Year’s Eve and the morning of New Year’s Day, said Mike Wofford, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard. The heaviest precipitation likely will fall on New Year’s Day and Saturday, with light showers the Friday in between, forecasters said.
The storms are expected to drop 1 to 3 inches of rain in valley and coastal areas and 3 to 5 inches in the mountains.
Typically, New Year’s Day is rain-free in the Los Angeles area.
According to the National Weather Service, rain has fallen on just 10% of all New Year’s Days between 1878 and 2025. In 1934, it rained 3.12 inches in Pasadena — the most ever on the holiday. That was also the year it rained more than one inch on the first day of the year in Los Angeles.
The Weather Service has predicted 1.53 inches on Thursday.
The Rose Parade started in 1890 as a promotional event by the Valley Hunt Club, a social organization, to show off Pasadena’s famously mild winter weather.
“In New York, people are buried in snow. Here, our flowers are blooming and our oranges are about to bear. Let’s hold a festival to tell the world about our paradise,” Charles F. Holder, one of the parade’s originators, said at one of the club’s meetings as the parade was being planned for the first time, according to the Tournament of Roses.
The earliest “floats” were horse-drawn carriages adorned with flowers.
While there have been plenty of cold, gray-sky Rose Parades over the years, it has been 20 years since rain fell on the iconic event.
The last time it rained during the parade was in 2006, and that was only the 10th time in the event’s history, The Times reported then. Four floats — from the cities of Burbank and Sierra Madre, the Walt Disney Co., and Trader Joe’s — broke down amid the wet conditions.
This year’s parade theme is “The Magic in Teamwork,” and the parade marshal will be Earvin “Magic” Johnson, the Los Angeles Lakers legend and billionaire businessman who is a co-owner of the Dodgers, Sparks and other professional sports franchises.
The parade will take place days before the one-year anniversary of the deadly Eaton and Palisades fires that began amid hurricane-force winds and dry conditions on Jan. 7, 2025.
The Eaton fire burned thousands of homes in Altadena, just a few miles north of Colorado Boulevard, where the bulk of the Rose Parade takes place.
The Tournament of Roses is providing more than 1,000 free grandstand tickets for fire victims to view the parade.
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