St. Paul wraps up a Winter Carnival that didn't include a winter

As the sun set Saturday over St. Paul’s Rice Park, the few remaining blocks of ice that once formed sculptures melted into the ground as people lined downtown’s 4th Avenue for the Vulcan Torchlight Parade, the culmination of the city’s annual Winter Carnival.

The parade and ensuing Overthrow of Boreas ceremony — a tradition in which the volunteer-filled Vulcan Krewe dethrones a fictitious king and his royal family on the steps of the nearby public library — symbolizes the end of winter.

With snow and ice sculptures already melted after last week’s warm afternoons, many carnival goers were moving on from winter too.

“It’s pretty much summer,” said Travis Schiro of Woodbury, dressed in shorts.

The springlike weather of the past few weeks created an unfamiliar setting for this year’s carnival finale, one that Schiro, who has attended snowless winter festivals before, described as a bit weird.

The warmer temps, though, made it all the more simple for Schiro to take his 22-month-old son, Jude, to his first parade.

A few feet away, Steve Anderson and his daughter, Jocelyn, paused to stand still to watch the parade after spending hours at the Landmark Center for a dance party with crafts and face painting. Without ice sculptures to attract more visitors, the final day seemed less crowded compared with previous years, Anderson said.

Attendance appeared to be down overall, said Lisa Jacobson, president and CEO of the St. Paul Festival and Heritage Foundation, the nonprofit that organizes the carnival. Most carnival events are not ticketed, she said, so it is difficult to track attendance overall. Jacobson said some smaller events like the puzzle competition saw better attendance than 2023.

She said she thinks more people would have come downtown if the ice and snow sculptures had stood a little longer. A new live performance stage in Rice Park was a popular but did not draw the kind of crowd the foundation hoped for, she said.

“We will continue to evaluate how best to make 2025 another great Winter Carnival, as our small nonprofit responds to the needs and interests of the community to continue celebrating Winter together,” Jacobson said in an email.

For Nicole Klapak and her mother, Carolyn O’Neill, the 40-degree evening made the day more bearable. The two were especially grateful for the opportunity to “feel their toes” this year.

The two traveled from Princeton, Minn., to support Jocelyn O’Neill, Klapak’s sister and O’Neill’s other daughter, who last year participated in the dethroning ceremony as Aurora, Queen of Snows, a character in the royal family.

Though she missed the sight of snow and sculptures, the weather didn’t affect Carolyn O’Neill’s favorite part of the carnival, the coronation and selection of this year’s characters for the royal family.

“It’s still the Winter Carnival,” she said. “The warmth just made it more pleasing.”