By Gus Saltonstall
This year’s Thanksgiving will be a wet one in New York City.
There is rain forecast to begin early Thursday and continue throughout the day. In total, the city is expected to receive around an inch of rain in a 24-hour period, according to the National Weather Service. The temperatures will sit between 41 and 51 degrees.
What does the rain mean for Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade?
The Thanksgiving Day Parade takes place rain or shine, but the wind levels have an effect on what the procession looks like.
Organizers of the parade told West Side Rag in an email that based on city guidelines, no giant character balloons, such as Snoopy and Ronald McDonald, will be operated when there are sustained wind conditions exceeding 23 mph and wind gusts exceeding 34 mph on the parade route.
Luckily, the wind on Thursday is only expected to reach 13 mph, with gusts of up to 25 mph.
The wind regulations for the Thanksgiving parade went into effect after the 1997 rendition of the event, when strong gusts made it close to impossible for the balloons handlers to control them in the sky.
Here is a description of the balloon carnage from the following day of the 1997 parade by the New York Times.
“For a while, the balloons seemed to be falling like flies. Barney suffered extensive damage and had to be removed at 51st Street. The Pink Panther succumbed at 42nd Street. Quik Bunny and the Cat in the Hat limped away at 36th Street.”
That year, the same six-story-tall Cat in the Hat balloon struck a lamp post at 72nd Street and Central Park West, and went careening toward the ground.
Multiple people were injured, and there was a subsequent lawsuit against the city for hundreds of millions of dollars. Additionally, organizers of the event implemented new size rules the next year to make the balloons smaller.
Back to this year’s parade. If you do go, expect to see the balloons, but wear a raincoat. (No umbrellas allowed.)
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No umbrellas allowed?! Why? How?
I hope all the balloon handlers will have good all-over waterproofs, extra ropes (and handlers), glove warmers, and the best hot cocoa at the end of the route!
what if it rains hard? will the live performances still go on?
The balloon inflating viewing time between 1 PM and 6 PM has cut back the foot traffic big time !
I’ve never seen it this lite ever before. By 9pm there was hardly
a soul on Columbus Avenue.
They actually open the guard fencing to W. 81st St. to anybody who wanted to view the balloons. I’ve never seen this done before in many years I have been living here, my block was like a ghost town, amazing…
What cut back the balloon inflation viewing this year was how it was handled last year. You had so many disappointed people. If they want people like me to come again to a future balloon inflation, the elected officials should reach out and apologize for what happened last year and openly tell them that they are welcome to come again.
The other policy suggestion I have is that they should make the balloon inflation and parade a ticketed event that is free for non UWS residents or workers and a nominal fee for everyone else, if it is an organized non chaotic event, people will come. You can have people pay for tickets, the proceeds go to the Columbus Avenue BID to fund its work all year round, especially since many of the negative externalities with this event are dumped onto Columbus, and maybe with the tickets give discounts to UWS based businesses. This would be more organized than 2023 which drove a lot away myself included.
Lee, rain or shine the “whole ”
parade goes on as planned.