Wet forecast could be an itinerary change for Maritime events

On Friday afternoon, cloudy but dry conditions helped kick off Moncton’s River of Pride week.

“People can expect a lot of new events,” said River of Pride vice president, Justin Durette.

“We have a big concert happening this year of course with Reve, a Juno award winning artist, so we’re excited for that, we have a brand new firework show for the first time in Canada’s pride organizations, that should be an interesting event and there’s family events, lots of family events.”

However, the dry conditions are expected to be short lived. Most of the Maritimes were sitting in either a special weather statement or rainfall warning by Friday evening.

“If any day an event gets cancelled, we usually post by 4 or 3 p.m. so everyone’s well prepared for what’s happening and we always try to find space to replace what we lost,” said Durette.

Meanwhile, other weekend events decided to take precautions early.

The Atlantic Air Show in Nova Scotia decided to have its performance on Friday instead of Saturday as originally planned, and its second show on Sunday is still up in the air.

“We know we’re not going to satisfy everybody because people made plans for Saturday and that’s the only day you can come and we’ll address all those things,” they said in a YouTube video that was posted to their website.

Another cancellation for the Nova Scotia area was the first ever East Coast Ukrainian Festival, which was in honour of Ukrainian Independence Day and was supposed to take place at the Halifax waterfront this Sunday.

“We will have it at the end of September, and we will have it indoors, and we’ll post an update on our website,” said Ukrainian Canadian Congress Nova Scotia Branch vice president, Olha Khaperska in an interview with CTV News on Thursday.

One of the biggest events this weekend in the Maritimes is the YQM Country Music Festival, an outside concert that is taking place in Dieppe.

On Friday, guests were still running to the gates with excitement, without knowing exactly what the rest of the weekend will bring in terms of weather.

“We're rain or shine, we're ready to go, the acts are excited and we're still going to have a great party,” said Samuel Bourgeois, with the festival.

Those getting ready to head into Day 2 said while they’re worried about their camping arrangements, specifically how their tents will hold up against the storm, they don’t plan on letting the rain ruin their weekend.

The weather alerts put out by Environment Canada say rainfall between 40 to 60 millimetres is possible this weekend in many areas across Atlantic Canada.