CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A popular Charlotte food festival and accompanying charitable run/walk event are pushed back by a week because of expected impacts from Hurricane Ian.
Organizers for the Taste of Charlotte Festival made the announcement on Tuesday, pushing the festival dates from Sept. 30 through Oct. 2 to Oct. 7 through Oct. 9. The times for the festival remain largely the same: 11 a.m. through 11 p.m. Oct. 7 and 8, and 11 a.m. through 4:30 p.m. on Oct. 9. The festival is still happening at Truist Field.
Additionally, the Pink Cupcake Walk which supports Charlotte-area families facing breast cancer is similarly impacted. It is still set to start at 10 a.m. and end at 10:30 a.m., albeit on Oct. 8. The one-mile walk/run is still set to happen at Truist Field, allowing participants to get their steps in around the baseball field before the festival opens up that day.
Hurricane Ian is set to make landfall in Florida on Wednesday, Sept. 28 as a Category 4 storm, hitting Tampa and St. Petersburg the hardest. Already, the storm ripped through western Cuba early on Tuesday after about 50,000 people were evacuated, and meteorologists with the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) warn the warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico will only help intensify it.
It's likely that Tampa and St. Petersburg will get their first direct hit by a major hurricane in more than a century. The Associated Press reports the main problem is that storms coming up from the south - like Hurricane Ian - will shove plenty of water into an already-shallow Tampa Bay area. The NHC predicts a storm surge in Tampa Bay and surrounding waters anywhere between 5 and 10 feet above normal tide conditions, coupled with rainfall between 10 and 15 inches.