The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is a spectacular annual event marched by thousands and watched by millions — and a massive undertaking with countless moving parts . Inevitably, mistakes happen, Mother Nature intervenes, and balloons go off the prescribed path through New York City.

After a series of scary mishaps involving wayward balloons, safety measures are now in place for the parade. Two months beforehand, employees of a half-dozen city agencies walk the parade route and note hundreds of hazards to balloons along the way, and then set about neutralizing those threats, according to The New York Times . City officials have also required Macy’s to anchor balloons to vehicles and to install anemometers along the route to monitor wind speed and direction.

Wind is “the one thin

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