The weather this weekend may be a little bit frightful.

The bad news is that wet, cold weather is to be expected for most of the day.

The good news is that the thousands of football fans who spent the evening outside at City Park Stadium for the Class AAA semifinal game dodged a bullet.

National Weather Service forecasters confirmed a wintery mix would not hit until the wee hours this morning.

"We’re looking for some snow and rain late (Friday)," said Kent McMullen, a forecaster for the National Weather Service. "But nothing until midnight."

Any snow Gainesville may receive will likely melt because of warm ground temperatures, McMullen said.

"Down in Gainesville we’re looking at maybe a trace, a half inch at the most by Saturday morning," McMullen said. "We’re looking at overnight low temperatures of 38 (degrees), so whatever does fall it’s not going to stick around for very long."

Some areas of the state may see a bona fide snowfall, however.

"Just to the north in the mountains they’ll probably pick up 1 or 2 inches of snow," McMullen said.

The iffy forecast got in the way of at least one Christmas celebration this weekend. Flowery Branch officials announced Thursday that this weekend’s Christmas parade and festival has been canceled because of the weather.

The festival had been planned for this afternoon and won’t be rescheduled, event chairwoman Mary Jones said.

"We’re so far into December that there’s no (time) to reschedule it to," she said. "I’m so sorry, but we really looked forward to it. ... We just couldn’t provide parking because of the ground being wet."

Temperatures should warm up a bit by late in the afternoon.

"Saturday we’re looking for a high temperature of about 41 degrees and we may even see a little bit of sunshine in the afternoon," McMullen said.

Any rain should clear out by Sunday and make way for warmer temperatures, with a high of 52 degrees, by the end of the weekend.