Will Gov. Bill Richardson be wearing a raincoat and carrying an umbrella as New Mexico's first float in the annual extravaganza in years takes the 5 1/2-mile stroll down Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena?

It's the 117th Tournament of Roses Parade and likely to be the first one rained on since 1955. At least 2 inches of rain are expected as the 2 1/2-hour parade gets under way at 9 a.m. our time. The parade is being telecast on ABC, NBC, Univision and several cable channels.

There's a legend out there that the parade organizers agreed never to hold the parade on a Sunday, and the Great Rainmaker in the Sky agreed to keep the parade dry. So we were worried that maybe New Mexico's presence in the parade did something to sour this cosmic deal.

You may remember that, contrary to what the state Tourism Department thought back in early November when it announced New Mexico's "first" appearance in the Rose Parade, that there was a Santa Fe/Zozobra-themed float along with the Zozobra creator Will Shuster in the parade back in the 1950s, according to a later Journal story.  Oh, no, we thought -- was that the LAST time it rained? Turns out the rains came in 1955, but Zozobra -- who won that year's top prize -- was in 1950.

Anyway, the Journal's own Andrew Webb is on the scene in Pasadena to give us an up close, personal and soggy view of our state's place in the ... er, sun. Check out his stories here and here.

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