Unseasonal, warm weather in Detroit melting festivities

The City's winter festival needs snow or cold weather to hold events.
DETROIT (AP) -- Welcome to sunny Detroit! OK, so maybe it's partly cloudy Detroit.
Either way, there's certainly one thing almost every visitor will notice -- or not notice -- upon reaching the Motor City for Super Bowl week: No snow.
Not falling from the sky, not frozen on the grass, not piled up on the side of the highway.
"Nothing out there right now," said John Wisnewski, general manager at Chandler Park Golf Course in Detroit. "It rained all day yesterday, so it's pretty wet. But it's going to be 45 degrees today. I expect some players today."
There has been, of course, a lot of hand-wringing about bringing the premiere event in American sports, one that draws more than 100,000 people to the city and 85 million more to their TVs, to Detroit.
Struggling city
The city had been struggling even before Ford Motor Co.'s announcement last week of up to 30,000 job cuts. Over the last 31/2 years, it has undertaken the monumental task of revitalizing a hurting downtown, a project that is starting to take hold, at least in pockets of downtown near the Detroit River.
"Detroiters have a pent-up demand to do well at this event," Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said. "We want to reintroduce ourselves to the world."
With the economic impact it provides and the light it shines on Detroit, the Super Bowl might, indeed, do wonders in restoring some civic pride and getting the city back on track. More than 10,000 volunteers are chipping in and almost every commercial break on local television includes an ad imploring Detroit to shine for visitors this week. The headlines in the city's two major papers on Monday: "Welcome, World," and "Detroit: The real deal!"
But real deal or not, there are few things that foster more nervousness about a northern Super Bowl -- only the third in the 40-year history of the game -- than the weather.
"We don't have a lot of snow, but if we did, Eddie Francis and I have probably got the personnel to get it up before it hits the ground," Kilpatrick said of a deal his city cut with the mayor of Windsor, Detroit's Canadian neighbor.
The city spent the last two years hyping this Super Bowl as a chance to have fun in the cold weather -- embracing the realities of January in the Great Lakes region instead of trying to shirk from them.
Outdoors festival
The centerpiece of this week is an outdoors festival, the Motown Winter Blast, downtown at Campus Martius Park. It's meant to feature ice skating, dogsled racing and a huge snow slide, along with the cars and music of Motown.
All plans have to be flexible, though.
"It's melting like crazy," said Robert Preshern, who was working security in front of the fledgling slide, watching the tons of artificial snow melt away. If there's no snow by the time the Blast opens Thursday, there are plans to put wheels on the dog sleds to make them glide.
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