Washington State International Kite Festival

Last updated
The festival in August 2008 Washington State International Kite Festival 2008.jpg
The festival in August 2008

Washington State International Kite Festival is the largest kite festival in North America. [1] The annual event has been running since 1981 on the third weekend of August [2] [3] drawing more than 100,000 attendees, [4] on the Washington state coast near Long Beach, Washington where there is a steady, strong wind, strong enough at times to drag pickup trucks kites are tethered to, or lift a man 100 feet into the air. [3] Events at the festival include kite fighting and lighted kite shows. [5] It is hosted by the World Kite Museum in Long Beach.

The festival was cancelled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kite</span> Tethered aircraft

A kite is a tethered heavier-than-air or lighter-than-air craft with wing surfaces that react against the air to create lift and drag forces. A kite consists of wings, tethers and anchors. Kites often have a bridle and tail to guide the face of the kite so the wind can lift it. Some kite designs do not need a bridle; box kites can have a single attachment point. A kite may have fixed or moving anchors that can balance the kite. The name is derived from the kite, the hovering bird of prey.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fuerteventura</span> One of the Canary Islands

Fuerteventura is one of the Canary Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean, part of the North Africa region, and politically part of Spain. It is located 97 km (60 mi) away from the northwestern coast of Africa. The island was declared a biosphere reserve by UNESCO in 2009.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Whidbey Island</span> Island in Puget Sound in Washington, United States

Whidbey Island is the largest of the islands composing Island County, Washington, in the United States, and the largest island in Washington state. Whidbey is about 30 miles (48 km) north of Seattle, and lies between the Olympic Peninsula and the I-5 corridor of western Washington. The island forms the northern boundary of Puget Sound. It is home to Naval Air Station Whidbey Island. The state parks and natural forests are home to numerous old growth trees.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Long Beach, California</span> City in California, United States

Long Beach is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. It is the 43rd-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 466,742 as of 2020. A charter city, Long Beach is the seventh-most populous city in California, the second most populous city in Los Angeles County, and the largest city in California that is not a county seat city.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lincoln City, Oregon</span> City in Oregon, United States

Lincoln City is a city in Lincoln County on the Oregon Coast of the United States, between Tillamook to the north and Newport to the south. It is named after the county, which was named in honor of former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. The population was 9,815 at the 2020 Census.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Long Beach, Washington</span> City in Washington, United States

Long Beach is a city in Pacific County, Washington, United States. The population was 1,392 at the 2010 census.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kiteboarding</span> Extreme sport

Kiteboarding or kitesurfing is a sport that involves using wind power with a large power kite to pull a rider across a water, land, or snow surface. It combines the aspects of paragliding, surfing, windsurfing, skateboarding, snowboarding, and wakeboarding. Kiteboarding is among the less expensive and more convenient sailing sports.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boracay</span> Island in the Philippines

Boracay is a resort island in the Western Visayas region of the Philippines, located 0.8 kilometers (0.50 mi) off the northwest coast of Panay. It has a total land area of 10.32 square kilometers (3.98 sq mi), under the jurisdiction of three barangays in Malay, Aklan, and had a population of 37,802 in 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Long Beach Peninsula</span> Peninsula in the south Washington state

The Long Beach Peninsula is an arm of land on the southern coast of the state of Washington in the United States. Entirely within Pacific County, it is bounded on the west by the Pacific Ocean, the south by the Columbia River, and the east by Willapa Bay. Leadbetter Point State Park and Willapa National Wildlife Refuge are at the northern end of the peninsula and Cape Disappointment is at the southern end, with Pacific Pines State Park located in between.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fighter kite</span> Kite used in the sport of kite fighting

Fighter kites are kites used for the sport of kite fighting. Traditionally, most are small, unstable single-line flat kites where line tension alone is used for control, at least part of which is manja, typically glass-coated cotton strands, to cut down the line of others.

The Blossom Kite Festival, formerly the Smithsonian Kite Festival, is an annual kite event usually held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. in late March during the National Cherry Blossom Festival. The event's organizers cancelled all kite festivals since 2020 because of concerns related to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electric Daisy Carnival</span> American annual electronic dance music festival

Electric Daisy Carnival, commonly known as EDC, is an electronic dance music festival organized by promoter and distributor Insomniac. The annual flagship event, EDC Las Vegas, is held in May at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and is currently the largest electronic dance music festival in North America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pingtan Island</span> Island in Fujian, China

Pingtan Island or Haitan Island is an island of Fuzhou off the east coast of mainland Asia in Pingtan County, Fujian Province, China (PRC), south of the complex estuary of the Min River. It is the largest island in Fujian and the fifth-largest island administered by the People's Republic of China.

Makani Technologies LLC was an Alameda, California-based company that developed airborne wind turbines. Founded in 2006, Makani was acquired by Google in May 2013. In February 2020, Makani was shut down by Alphabet, Google's parent company.

John Barresi is an American sport kite flier, kite designer, editor and owner of KiteLife magazine and KiteLife.com since 2002, leader of Team KiteLife performance team, and owner of Kite Forge design company.

The first confirmed case relating to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States was announced by the state of Washington on January 21, 2020. Washington made the first announcement of a death from the disease in the U.S. on February 29 and later announced that two deaths there on February 26 were also due to COVID-19. Until mid-March, Washington had the highest absolute number of confirmed cases and the highest number per capita of any state in the country, until it was surpassed by New York state on April 10, 2020. Many of the deceased were residents of a nursing home in Kirkland, an Eastside suburb of Seattle in King County.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">COVID-19 pandemic in Florida</span>

On March 1, 2020, the U.S. state of Florida officially reported its first two COVID-19 cases in Manatee and Hillsborough counties. There is evidence, however, that community spread of COVID-19 first began in Florida much earlier, perhaps as early as the first week of January, with as many as 171 people in Florida who had shown symptoms now identified with COVID-19, prior to receiving confirmation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By March 11, the CDC saw evidence to conclude that community spread of the virus had occurred within the state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tropical Storm Melissa (2019)</span> Atlantic noreaster and tropical storm in 2019

Tropical Storm Melissa was a nor'easter and a short-lived tropical storm that affected portions of the U.S. East Coast and Atlantic Canada in October 2019. The fourteenth depression and thirteenth named storm of the 2019 Atlantic hurricane season, Melissa originated from a cold front that developed over the southwestern Atlantic on October 6. The system developed tropical storm-force winds on October 8, before becoming a nor'easter on the next day. The system then began to organize, and was designated as Subtropical Storm Melissa on October 11. Melissa was then upgraded into a tropical storm, the following day. However, the storm soon began to disorganize and transition into an extratropical low by October 14, before dissipating later that same day.

The COVID-19 pandemic in New South Wales, Australia was part of the worldwide pandemic of the coronavirus disease 2019 caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. The first confirmed case in New South Wales was identified on 19 January 2020 in Sydney where three travellers returning from Wuhan, Hubei, China, tested positive for the virus.

The World Kite Museum is a museum in Long Beach, Washington. First opened to the public on August 21, 1990, in a converted beach cottage acquired by the city, it opened with a collection of over 700 kites, exhibiting Japanese, Chinese, and Malaysian kites. It has grown to include galleries and exhibits on rotation with kites, models, and archives from around the world. The American Kitefliers Association combined their archives with the museum's in the late 1990s. The collection ranges from modern creations back to antiquity, and claims to have the most complete collection of Japanese kites outside of Japan. In 2005 the museum purchased a two-story building that currently houses over 1500 kites from 26 countries around the world.

References

  1. Finnegan, Lora J. (March 1, 1998), "Best of the West", Sunset
  2. "About the WSIKF". Archived from the original on 2023-12-05. Retrieved 2024-03-18.
  3. 1 2 Tan Vinh (April 26, 2012), "Go fly a kite at Long Beach", The Seattle Times
  4. "Bid the wind blow.(kiting becomes popular sport)", The Economist , May 6, 1995, archived from the original on November 18, 2018
  5. "International Kite Festival with Sea Grant", Washington Marine Spatial Planning (website), Washington state government State Ocean Caucus, August 19, 2015
  6. Ashley Nerbovig (June 1, 2020). "Long Beach samples its sewer for covid". Chinook Observer .