NEW YORK CITY(TIP): New York City’s huge Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade marched on Thursday, November 22, despite frigid cold and strong winds that earlier threatened to ground the giant character balloons.
From early morning, families were seen braving the cold in the thousands to see the annual spectacle roll through the city, despite it being the most frigid parade on record. Diana Ross, John Legend, Martina McBride and the Muppets from “Sesame Street” preformed in the brutal cold, among others.
The police department were monitoring wind gauges along the 2.5-mile parade route in case balloons needed to be lowered or taken down. However, at parade start winds were low enough to allow for all balloons to fly and there were no incidents.
The three-hour event kicked off on 77 St. and Central Park West at 9 a.m. Beforehand, New York City issued an extreme cold weather alert for Thursday and urged anyone going outside to wear hats, scarves, gloves and layered clothing and to keep their fingertips, earlobes, and noses covered to prevent frostbite.
“Get ready for an amazing parade but put on every layer you have in your household, wear every glove you can find, every scarf, hand warmers, whatever you got, you’re going to need it tomorrow,” Mayor Bill de Blasio told crowds gathered to watch the parade’s giant balloons being inflated.
(NBC Screenshot)
In addition to giant balloons of Charlie Brown, The Grinch,Ronald McDonald, and others, the parade featured about 8,000 marchers, performances from singers such as Diana Ross, John Legend and Martina McBride, two-dozen floats and a finale with Santa Claus.
The NYPD had thousands of officers stationed along the parade route. They included counterterrorism teams with long guns, plainclothes officers mixed in with the crowd and a new squad of K-9 teams that can sniff out explosives from a few hundred feet away.
All spectators were to be screened with metal detectors at security checkpoints. Backpacks, booze and e-cigarettes are banned. Certain areas near the start and finish were off-limits.
Police cars and sand-filled sanitation trucks were positioned to stop vehicles from driving into the crowd and new technology was being used to detect drones, which are illegal to fly over crowds in New York City.
(NBC Screenshot)
Federal rules now allow police to “take action” against rule-breaking drones, but that doesn’t mean officers are going to be shooting them down, said NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller.
“Our job is to offer maximum protection against any incident at the parade, but it’s also to make sure that we don’t protect it to the point that it’s not fun,” Miller said. “Our people will be as accommodating as possible and make sure that people see them, they feel safe, but that they enjoy themselves.”
There were no known, credible threats to the city or the parade, Commissioner James O’Neill said prior to the parade. He warned spectators to be vigilant in the wake of recent mass shootings and package bombs and to alert officers if they suspected something is suspicious.
(With Inputs from NBC New York)