NYC sees ideal weather as Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade ushers in peak pageantry

7 a.m. is the witching hour for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. And as hundreds of participants raced to find their places as the sun rose Thursday morning, gray-haired float builder John Cheney stood relaxed in the center of the maelstrom.

After all, his work was done, and it was far from the first time he’d joined the parade. He first started building floats in 1976. Thursday marked parade number 47.

“We used to do the setup and take them down all within 24 hours,” he said. “So now we’re doing it in two days. So we’ve got more energy this morning, which is good.”

Now in its 97th year, the annual helium-fueled pomp-and-circumstance is more than ever a celebration global in reach but quintessentially New York City in scene and scale.

Over the next hour, thousands of participants — many of them from across the country — readied to join the procession, which runs from the Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side to Herald Square.

Several million people typically prepare to brave the cold to watch the parade in person. But this year Mother Nature provided near perfect conditions: Early morning temperatures hovered around the mid-40s, and the clouds were making way for a clear blue sky.

Even more critical to the fate of the giant balloons — Snoopy, Pillsbury Doughboy, Willy Wonka and Kung Fu Panda, to name a few — the winds were calm.

The start of this year’s parade was moved up a half hour earlier to 8:30 a.m, a shift that didn’t appear to make a difference to the hundreds who arrived before sunrise to nab the best viewing spots along Central Park West.

Even before the parade began, there was plenty for spectators to see. In front of the Museum of Natural History, a group of cheerleaders, their hair adorned with neon yellow bows, wrapped themselves in silver foil wrappers for warmth as they waited.

Not far away, the marching band from Alabama A&M looked stalwart in their maroon and…