Unsettled weather cancels Thursday at Square, Shakespeare
Published: July 23, 2009, 11:56 am
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The looming threat of severe lightning prompted the cancellation of the Thursday at the Square concert and the opening night of Shakespeare in Delaware Park's production of "Julius Caesar."
The decision to cancel the scheduled downtown performance by Neko Case, with special guest Jason Lytle, was made after Buffalo Place organizers consulted the National Weather Service.
"We are canceled. There's a bad electrical storm coming in," said Steven L. Joseph, manager of marketing for Buffalo Place. "There's no sense putting anybody in harm's way."
Organizers for Shakespeare in Delaware Park waited until about 6 p.m. before deciding to cancel tonight's performance.
The band of showers that drenched the region overnight already forced the postponement of today's second round of the Porter Cup, a top-level amateur golf tournament held at the Niagara Falls Country Club.
While the rain that soaked most of Western New York through the morning has moved out of the area, a band of thunderstorms was moving north from Chautauqua County this evening.
"That stuff down there could hit the Buffalo area in about another two hours, if it holds together," meteorologist Chuck Tingley said at 5:45 p.m.
Fans of the downtown concert series can be forgiven if it seems every week brings rain or, at the least, a chance of rain.
Buffalo Place will only cancel or cut short a concert as … was the case with the Los Lobos performance on June 25 … in the face of lightning, hail or "Biblical rain," Joseph said.
Of the 13 Thursday at the Square and Buffalo Rocks the Harbor concerts held this summer prior to today, nine have had rain of varying intensity, he said.
"My organization doesn't [like this summer's weather], but my garden does," Joseph said.
Tonight also was to be the first performance of "Julius Caesar," the second play offered by Shakespeare in Delaware Park this season.
The opening performance of the first play, "The Tempest," was canceled because of rain on June 18. Last summer, at least eight performances of the bard's works were canceled or cut short due to rain.
Our latest vexing storm system moved south to north through the region starting around midnight and most areas saw six to eight straight hours of showers that left between half an inch to 1 inch of rain, meteorologist David Thomas said.
In addition to the rain, Western New York has seen colder than usual temperatures this summer. The average temperature through Wednesday of 65.4 degrees makes this July the coolest since the weather service began recording temperatures at its station in Cheektowaga in 1943.
That's because the cooling jet stream that normally has moved into Canada by this point in the summer continues to hang over the northern United States, Thomas said.
Today's and Friday's predicted high temperatures of 75 degrees should rise to 80 degrees or higher for the weekend … with, of course, a chance of rain each day.
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