Rain leads to storm at Zilker Park

In case you missed it, the proposed cancellation of USA Cycling’s Cyclo-cross National Championships event at Zilker Park because of rain caused a storm of its own this weekend. Though park officials eventually backtracked on the cancellation and instead postponed the event until the next day with a new route, it wasn’t before widespread criticism of the move had flooded social media and digital media (See the Austin Chronicle’s coverage for better examples.) Austin Heritage Tree Foundation’s Zoila Vega pushed for the cancellation. In emails that appeared online, Vega, referring to the original route, predicted damage to the 1/2 Critical Root Zones of 20 Zilker heritage trees, and said moving forward with the event was against city code.