West Bloomfield Winter Fest Canceled

If anyone would have known last June that Feb. 1 would be sunny with highs in the 50s, perhaps West Bloomfield Parks and Recreation's annual Winter Fest event could have been saved.

The event, scheduled for Saturday morning at , has been canceled due to mild weather and insufficient snow, public information coordinator Susan Reeves said. Several of the vendors planned for such features as a live reindeer experience and dog sled rides were booked in June due to their popularity, so the event could not be rescheduled, she said.

It's a disappointing end to an event that hosted 1,500 people last year in what Reeves described as "the perfect storm of interest" — between residents eager to have fun at Parks and Recreation's premier annual outdoor event, those interested in the  and those who wanted to take advantage of the 15-20 inches of snow on the ground and a sunny forecast that day. 

"We put a lot of time, effort and money into planning these things, so we don’t like to see it canceled, but when you have a snow event and you have no snow, you have to cancel. We need a good 8-10 inch base of snow, and we're not going to make snow," Reeves said.

Reeves added that in her 10 years working at Parks and Recreation, there have been four outdoor winter-themed events scheduled under various names and three of them, including this year's, were canceled. Last year's event was the sole exception.

"We had a lot of fun last year and we wanted to do it even bigger this year. We had booked two dog sleds instead of one, as we did last year," she said.

Future Parks and Recreation events include the annual Daddy Daughter Dinner Dance at Feb. 23 and the outdoor Spring Fling Flashlight Egg Hunt on March 23 at Marshbank.

"We're hoping it doesn't snow (at the egg hunt)," Reeves said.