PORTLAND, Ore. — More popular Rose Festival events kick off this week: Fleet Week and dragon boat races. Two parades — the Junior and Grand Floral parades — will also take place in the coming days.
The events will draw large crowds to Portland and along the city's waterfront just as a stretch of summer-like weather begins. Here are all the details about this week's events, plus what to know about the forecast.
Fleet Week
Ships from the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Royal Canadian Navy are among those that will be visiting the Rose City. Fleet Week kicks off Wednesday, June 5 and runs through Sunday.
Tours go from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on June 6-9. They are on a first-come, first-serve basis and tickets are not required. Visitors need to bring an ID and must wear closed-toe shoes.
Mark Miller, a spokesperson with Trimet said there will be bridge lifts that will be impact traffic as the ships come into town.
"We're going to be planning for a major service disruption, we've got three bridges that need lifted in order to get these fleet week ships on the river," said Miller.
Visiting ships will impact bridge traffic
Need to take a downtown Portland bridge this week? Starting Wednesday afternoon, the Broadway and Burnside bridges will be lifted for Fleet Week ships. Six ships are expected to arrive between 2 p.m. and 5:45 p.m. on Wednesday. Lifts may be longer than normal and could take up to 45 minutes in some cases, according to Multnomah County, which maintains some downtown Portland bridges. Most of the ships will leave on Monday, June 10 and that will bring frequent bridge lifts during the morning.
For real-time bridge lift updates, check out Portland Fire and Rescue and Multnomah County's social pages.
Several bus lines, all MAX lines and the Portland Streetcar will also be disrupted near the Steel Bridge. Shuttle buses will take riders across the Steel Bridge, TriMet said. Riders should prepare for delays and plan for extra travel time. For up-to-date service alerts, click here.
Junior Parade
On Wednesday, children from all over the city will take part in the Junior Parade. It will run from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Dance teams and marching bands will make their way through the Hollywood District in Northeast Portland with colorful floats.
Grand Floral Parade
Marching bands, drill teams, dancers, vintage cars and much more will parade through the Lloyd District with all-floral floats. The Grand Floral Parade runs from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Saturday, June 8.
KGW will stream the Junior and Grand Floral parades live on the KGW website and app, the KGW YouTube channel and KGW+.
Dragon boat races
For more than 20 years, the Rose Festival has brought dragon boat teams from around the world to compete on the Willamette River. The races will be held June 8-9 and will feature four-team heats held every nine minutes. They are free to watch.
Weather forecast
Monday and Tuesday bring showery weather that will dry up come Wednesday — just in time for the Rose Festival events.
Wednesday will kick off a long stretch of dry and warm weather, but KGW meteorologist Rod Hill said some weather models disagree on whether we'll see 90-degree heat into next week.
"For right now, I’m kind of riding the fence … I believe the most likely scenario is in fact 90-degree temps on Friday, Saturday and Sunday," Hill said.
