As a steady rain pounded the famed Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena early Thursday, Michael Brooks manned a clutch of lawn chairs and hunched beneath a daisy-printed umbrella as he guarded his family’s front-row seats for the 137th Rose Parade.
The 41-year-old Monterey Park resident clutched a cup of hot chocolate. Despite the deluge, he smiled.
It was his first time attending the Rose Parade in person, he said. Why wouldn’t he be happy?
“I was not going to miss this opportunity,” Brooks said. “I had to be right here, front row, for my mother-in-law, for my wife, for my kids,” Brooks said.
This year’s Rose Parade, which kicked off at 8 a.m. Thursday, is the first in 20 years to take place in the rain.
It is just the 11th rainy Rose Parade since the event — meant to showcase Southern California’s mild winters — began in 1890.
As of 4 a.m. Thursday, the storm system had already dumped 1.12 inches of rain on eastern Pasadena over the last two days, according to the National Weather Service. Downtown Los Angeles had received 0.94 inches. Rain with a chance of thunderstorms will continue throughout the morning, forecasters said.
Still, some hard-core parade fans camped overnight along the route, huddling beneath building awnings and raincoats as they rang in the new year.
Lisa Derderian, a spokeswoman for the City of Pasadena, said parade organizers had prepared responses to different weather scenarios and would have a meteorologist present during the parade.
“Throughout the year, we train on worst-case scenarios and always hope for the best,” Derderian told The Times. “Should we need to give direction to parade-goers due to extreme weather, we have boots-on-the-ground personnel, tournament volunteers, public address systems and additional resources that can assist within minutes if the need exists.”
Volunteers decorate Kermit the Frog on the Visit Mississippi “Where Creativity Blooms” float in the run up to the Rose Parade.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
Shortly before 7 a.m., revelers in raincoats shuffled into prime parade-viewing position on a bridge above the 134 Freeway.
Roni Jones and her mother, Cheryl Conley, of Altadena, said they fondly remember the last time it rained on the parade in 2006.
“People come together and make it happen and make it work,” Jones said. “There’s a lot of local excitement, and then there’s the excitement of the football game. … When they said it’s gonna rain? We don’t care.”
The women said they were proud graduates of John Muir High School in Pasadena — Jones, Class of 1986; Conley, Class of 1966 — and that the parade, thankfully, has not changed much since those days.
The event was a bright spot after a difficult year. Conley lost her longtime house in the Eaton fire, which destroyed thousands of homes in Altadena, just a few miles north of the parade route. But she was joyful on New Year’s Day, and grateful for “the support that we’ve had from the community, just the love and care.”
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.
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.
Derderian said local officials are anticipating more calls for hypothermia and foot injuries from marching along the 5.5-mile route in wet socks.
The 605 All Star Band performs in the 2025 Rose Bowl Parade along Colorado Boulevard, in Pasadena, on Jan. 1, 2025.
(Ringo Chiu/Ringo Chiu / For The Times)
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.
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 is taking 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.
Before the parade began Thursday, a small group of women from the San Fernando Valley donned ponchos and dragged blue coolers containing some 600 tamales along Colorado Boulevard.
It was their first year to sell food at the Rose Parade, said Kayla Montes, 22, of Pacoima.
Their $5 tamales were selling well amid the chill. The women woke up at 2 a.m. and said they were happily energetic.
“We expect to still sell out today,” Montes said.
Some spectators found clever ways of keeping dry.
Jeff Landis of Glendale, 44, fashioned two heavy-duty as an extra hydrophobic trash bags as a hydrophobic layer for his two children.
“I imagine a sickness might go around after today,” Landis said. He laughed as the kids waddled in black bags behind him. “Gotta stay dry.”
Times staff writers Alex Wigglesworth cand Gavin J. Quinton contributed to this report.
