Around 7:15pm that night, the fire parade began. Here's a video to give you a taste of what it's like:
As the first fire cart is brought in to the city center, you can hear the crowd beginning to cheer.
The first fires started out relatively small.
As time went on, the fires became huge! I could not believe the height of some of these flames. It was a spectacular view to say the least! As you can see in the picture, some of the crowd is pulling back due to the immense amount of heat that's being generated.
These are what some people call "Fire Brooms". You'd see these several times. I don't know how people carried them. Even with all the protective gear, it still must've been smokin' hot!
So...was winter scared away? Perhaps. It got nervous at least and has been slowly disappearing.