Since 1924, the well know Macy’s department store has organized and run the New York City Thanksgiving day parade. It has been a success from the very beginning and for many, Thanksgiving starts with Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

New last year (November 2006) was a network of automatic weather stations, measuring wind speed and wind direction at seven street corners, in order for the Parade Crew to retract the Balloons in case of wind gust at next corner.

Figure: Location of the seven automatic weather stations in NYC during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.

These weather stations were installed and operated by Pinnacle-Wireless, a large service and communications firm in the NYC area, see www.pinnacle-wireless.com. As for software applications, Pinnacle-Wireless chose VistaDataVision to display real-time weather information on web pages, as well as trend curves.

Using the VDV map feature, a separate weather information page was devoted to each of the 7 weather stations. These information pages were used by parade staff at each street corner. A common overview page for all stations was used at the Command Center and by the city personnel.

Again this year (November 2007) Vista Data Vision was used to monitor the 7 different Weather Stations

The Vista Data Vision applications really proofed their value in this extraordinary and successful project.

Figure: Overview 1 for the seven automatic weather stations.

Figure: Overview 2 for the seven automatic weather stations.

Figure: Live Data being displayed from the Weather Station on the corner of 42nd street and Broadway.