Persona Digest

WATERTOWN —

Although it wasn’t a surprise, Snowtown USA is the latest casualty of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Committee members on Wednesday announced this year’s Snowtown USA winter festival, which pays homage to the north country’s winters, will be canceled.

Committee members said the festival could not go on this year because the pandemic limits social contact and people are required to avoid large gatherings.

“While disappointing, we feel it is necessary to do our part to keep our community safe,” committee members said in a press release. “We look forward to Snowtown 2022.”

It would’ve been the seventh time the north country festival returned after it was brought back in 2014 following a 20-year hiatus.

Since its return, Snowtown USA had become a winter tradition.

Each year, hundreds of community members participate in a wide range of winter events and activities that center around the celebration of snow.

It was 43 years ago when “CBS Evening News” anchor Walter Cronkite coined the phrase “Snowtown USA” when reporting how Watertown received some 220 inches of snow during the winter of 1976-77, which included the blizzard of 1977.

A few years later, organizers used it as the name of the new festival.