A Helium Shortage Leads to Fewer Balloons in the Sky

One chain of party supply stores in Texas and Oklahoma was forced to make a cut worthy of Scrooge: no more balloons donated to charity events. A gated community on Lake Erie in Ohio that had handed out balloons to children at a Fourth of July parade for decades did not give out a single balloon this year. And a longtime tradition at University of Nebraska home football games — releasing up to 5,000 red balloons after the Huskers score their first touchdown — was downsized this season to a modest 2,000. The problem each time was not the supply of balloons, but the supply of what goes in them: helium.

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