Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and GIS

Fifty million people are expected to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade tomorrow. If you can’t be there in person, you can join the on-line Thanksgiving Day Parade community and experience the parade route through the Macy’s website. I have fond memories of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade route. Digg, of course, has already posted a Product Reviews Google Earth Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade route. However, I really like all of the walks included in the “Walk the Big Apple” site including their Autumn walks for the unofficial parade route and the ” An Advanced Self-Guided Walk into the New York Holiday Vortex“. At Daggle, Danny Sullivan has updated his article on how to watch the parade from outside the United States. He says your best bet is Earthcam’s live streaming broadcast,which gives you a “feel” for what is happening. If you are wondering how the parade and other huge crowd events are handled each year, ESRI has an article on how the FDNY GIS Unit get organized before events such as parades. New York City also has a Thanksgiving Day Task Force which among it many duties, “Developed a wind testing system that provides wind speed measurements from anemometers at key points along the parade route and transmits the information to balloon operators who adjust the flight heights of their balloons accordingly.”