Santa Claus is still coming to town
The Southland Santa Parade will steam ahead today, despite many parades throughout the world being cancelled.
Southland Christmas Parade Charitable Trust organiser Alice Pottinger said it was special that they could go ahead with the event while others throughout the country were cancelled.
Pottinger expected a large turnout of close to 20,000 people to watch the parade, because the Southland community had not had many largescale events to attend this year thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Most years the event attracts between 15,000 and 20,000 spectators.
The trust was determined to make sure a Santa parade was held this year and fortunately the pandemic did not delay planning.
This year the trust tried to keep costs down where it could and still be able to put on a good show, Pottinger said.
The parade will feature 60 floats from a variety of themes.
Pottinger did not want to give away all the surprises, but decorations on one of the new floats would be themed from the film Up.
A highlight Pottinger was looking forward to was seeing how people would react to the event.
There had been a core group of 20 volunteers working hard for the past month, making sure everything was ready for the street parade.
The Invercargill parade starts at 2pm at the corner of Kelvin and Gala streets, then moves on to Dee St and Tay St before heading back down Kelvin St.
MetService communications meteorologist Lewis Ferris said the weather during the event, between 2pm and 4pm, would be overcast with cloud building but it should not rain.
The temperature would be
17 degrees Celsius, so it should be a fairly good day, Ferris said.