Steve Berman/The New York Times  Kermit the Frog might not appear in the Macyâs Thanksgiving Day Parade if the weather creates hazardous conditions.  Felix the Cat once caught fire. Bullwinkle sprung a leak, spewing a blast of helium from his nose yards from the finish line. And giant M&Ms, Sonic the Hedgehog and SpongeBob SquarePants have all crashed into objects on the street.  But only once in the 87-year history of the Macyâs Thanksgiving Day Parade has bad weather grounded the towering balloons that float through the streets of Manhattan on the holiday.  Now, a storm bearing down on the East Coast is once again placing the fate of the balloons in doubt.  The balloons can rise as high as five stories and can be difficult to control in wind.  After a Cat in the Hat balloon hit a lamp post at West 72nd Street and Central Park West in 1997, knocking a portion down and injuring four spectators, city officials instituted strict wind guidelines.  If the wind blows at 23 m.p.h. or more and gusts reach 34 m.p.h., SpongeBob and the biggest of his inflatable brethren will be grounded. The decision will be made on Thursday morning by several agencies.  Joe Picca, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service, said, âWhat we are seeing right now is that at about 7 a.m. winds will be out of the west-northwest at about 25 miles per hour, but gusts could be as high as 40 miles per hour.â Mr. Picca continued, âBut we expect the winds to be on a downward trend as the day goes on.â  He noted that a challenge in forecasting winds in New York City has to do with the âcanyon effect,â with the tall buildings along the parade route creating a tunnel.  Historically, the blocks near Times Square have been particularly difficult for the balloonsâ handlers, with the open area allowing winds to whip with added force.  Regardless of the big balloonsâ inclusion, the parade is to begin at 9 a.m. on 77th Street, where on Wednesday green tarps secured with sandbags covered the pavement and metal barricades cut off access to the street.  As a steady rain fell, workers readied for the nightlong ritual of inflating the balloons on West 77th and West 81st Streets.  âIt says to me that balloons are flying,â said Jennifer George, 54, a designer and author who has lived on West 77th Street for 22 years.  But if the wind howls as predicted, they will not be paraded. The balloons will be unzipped and deflated, folded up right there on the Upper West Side and sent back to New Jersey.  The last time the balloons were grounded was in 1971, because of foul weather.  The only other reason the balloons did not fly was World War II, when the entire parade was canceled for several years.  The wind rules apply only to the group of 16 giant balloons, like Pikachu and Spider-Man. The less celebrated, smaller balloons, like a baseball and a smattering of star shapes, still have a chance if the weather gets bad.  Should the biggest balloons launch, each would be assigned a police sergeant, equipped with monitors to measure the wind speed during the parade, along with the usual team of handlers. âWeâve done a lot of training on this,â said Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly.  Mr. Kelly, 72, himself has firsthand experience: As a teenager he manned the ropes of a giant turkey balloon while working for Macyâs, long before the wind rules were drawn up. âThose were the days when you really had to hold on,â he said.  J. David Goodman contributed reporting.
Strong gusts forecast for Thursday threaten the flying of the huge balloons at the Macyâs Thanksgiving Day Parade. But work continues in hopes of calm weather.