WENATCHEE — Just as darkness set in Saturday night at Centennial Park, kids armed with colored light sabers ran every which way trying to keep warm before the Illuminated Parade started for the 11th annual Flake Festival.

Folks ate hot dogs, drank steaming mochas and munched on freshly-popped kettle corn. And a perpetual crowd gathered around a blazing bonfire roasting marshmallows for s’mores.

The only thing missing from the city of Wenatchee’s Flake Festival was, well, snowflakes — at least copious amounts of them.

A random flake fell here and there as parade entrants lined up for the route down Wenatchee Avenue.

Yesli Pena, 7, of Wenatchee, who decorated a white doily with red and silver glitter at the craft booth, said she really wished it would snow for the festival.

Alan Huff of Rock Island, who attended the festival to watch his 13-year-old daughter, Keisha Huff, sing “Jingle Bells” in the parade, said, “It doesn’t feel like Christmas without snow.”

Even though the frozen bits of precipitation were threatening a no-show, that didn’t stop the parade entrants from getting into the spirit of the holidays.

Jeff Sandberg, band director for the Clovis Point Intermediate School in East Wenatchee, gathered his merry musicians to play the Flake Festival medley he created a few years ago.

Wenatchee’s Central Washington Concrete employees spent five-and-a-half hours coiling 50 strands of red, white and blue Christmas tree lights around a cement truck and drum.

Radio station cars, a battalion of canines and three horses with Appleatchee Riders all sported strands of colored lights.

A group of women from Trav’s Restaurant and Lounge, calling themselves the Camo’ Snowflakes for the Troops and dressed in camouflage ponchos, practiced their left, left, left, right, left march.

And then it happened. At exactly six minutes before show time, the skies opened up and the fluffy white puffs created a snow globe effect in downtown Wenatchee.

“Now it’s an actual Flake Festival,” cried a giddy Brenda Martin of East Wenatchee.

Little Madison Countryman-Logstrom, a 2-year-old from East Wenatchee, smiled as she watched the snow cascade from the sky, then tilted her head back and caught flakes on her tongue.

The Illuminated Parade of holiday lights, honking horns and waving Santas went off without a hitch. And moments after the final entrant disappeared past the crowd, the snow also vanished.

Michele Mihalovich: 665-1188

mihalovich@wenatcheeworld.com