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Thursday, November 12, 2026Nov 12

Big balloons at Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade might be grounded (sorry, kids!)

Police officers stand near the site where a large balloon of the character Olaf from "Frozen" is being inflated for the Thanksgiving Day parade in New York, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2017. Sand-filled sanitation trucks and police sharpshooters will mix with glittering floats and giant balloons at a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade that comes in a year of terrible mass shootings and a deadly truck attack in lower Manhattan. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Police officers stand near the site where a large balloon of the character Olaf from "Frozen" is being inflated for the Thanksgiving Day parade in New York, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2017. Sand-filled sanitation trucks and police sharpshooters will mix with glittering floats and giant balloons at a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade that comes in a year of terrible mass shootings and a deadly truck attack in lower Manhattan. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig) Police officers stand near the site where a large balloon of the character Olaf from "Frozen" is being inflated for the Thanksgiving Day parade in New York, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2017. Sand-filled sanitation trucks and police sharpshooters will mix with glittering floats and giant balloons at a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade that comes in a year of terrible mass shootings and a deadly truck attack in lower Manhattan. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

NEW YORK -Astronaut Snoopy might not be cleared for take off. The famously buoyant SpongeBob SquarePants could wind up deflated and depressed. Olaf, the garrulous snowman from “Frozen,” could find himself melting into a heaping puddle on the pavement.

If the forecast for high winds holds, the most famous balloons in America, which float over Manhattan every Thanksgiving in the annual Macy’s parade, might get grounded this year.

(Sorry, kids! There’s always Disney Plus.)

Character balloons have been a staple of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade since 1927. But as the holiday approaches, meteorologists are forecasting heavy winds and strong gusts that could keep the parade’s big balloons from taking flight.

Foul weather is threatening Thanksgiving celebrations across the country, including a storm dropping snow from Colorado to the Great Lakes and forecasts of hurricane-force winds on the West Coast.