New Yorkers may be done with winter — but winter isn’t done with us.
Blizzard conditions are now expected as a nor’easter races toward the metropolitan area Sunday and threatens to drop as much as 20 inches in some spots, according to the latest projections from the National Weather Service.
Forecasters say snow will begin moving into New York and North Jersey Sunday morning, with conditions deteriorating through the afternoon. Whiteouts and wind gusts topping 60 miles per hour are expected Sunday night into Monday morning. The agency’s website warns of “dangerous to impossible travel” and the risk that strong winds could down tree limbs and cause power outages.
“Visibilities will be reduced down to a quarter, perhaps as low as an eighth of a mile at times, especially Sunday night into Monday morning,” said Jay Engle, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani said during a briefing Saturday that snow accumulation could grow to 20 inches. He also cautioned that with daytime temperatures “slipping above freezing and overnight lows dropping to the low 20s,” sidewalks and streets would be dangerously icy, perhaps “ even more hazardous conditions than we faced the last time around.”
The mayor said he will make a decision on in-person instruction at city schools by noon Sunday, but said city agencies are making changes ahead of the storm.
“We have brought in outside mechanical snow clearing equipment ahead of the snowfall, an unprecedented early activation of this resource,” Mamdani said. He added that the city is “expanding geocoded tracking of bus stops, crosswalks, and pedestrian ramps” and mandating that “a path of at least four feet must be cleared across all sidewalks to accommodate wheelchairs.”
The region has just emerged from a historic storm and grinding stretch of freezing cold that left two dozen people dead from exposure. Questions still remain about what the city might have done to better protect its most vulnerable residents.
A Code Blue will go into effect early Saturday evening, meaning homeless outreach efforts will run around the clock with warming buses, hospital-based warming spaces and school warming centers opening across the city.
The city will also halt homeless encampment sweeps during the storm, Mamdani said, as outreach workers focus on “getting homeless New Yorkers inside.”
Following the extended freeze earlier this month, he said, the city has learned it needs to have “a multiplicity of options that we were putting forward … because the same New Yorker who may be resistant to getting on a warming bus, may be willing to get into a [Health and Hospitals] warming center.”
The dirt-colored snow was finally melting when reports of weekend snow emerged earlier this week. Then, just in the last 24 hours, snowfall forecasts more than doubled.
“ It took a little while this time because of the complex nature of this storm,” Engle said.
However, unlike January’s storm, this round of snow won’t be followed by the same, exhausting deep freeze.
The region is expected to get between 13 and 18 inches, according to the weather service, with the harshest conditions coming Sunday night into at least the first half of Monday. The storm should finally pull away Monday afternoon leaving behind clearing skies. Daytime temperatures will stay in the low 30’s and by Thursday, the region will warm up and may see some rain.
Minor coastal flooding is likely along Jamaica Bay, Staten Island, the Battery, and parts of the Bronx and northern Queens.
A blizzard warning is in effect for the city and the entire coast of northeast New Jersey, southern Connecticut and Long Island, Engle said.
City agencies are already preparing. The Department of Sanitation recruited snow shovelers on Saturday, offering at least $19 an hour.
In New Jersey, Gov. Mikie Sherrill declared a state of emergency that will go into effect beginning at noon on Sunday.
“So, I said it last time and I’ll say it again,” she said on Saturday. “We need to be prepared and we need to be safe. Get water, get all of your charging done with your devices, stay off the roads.”
Officials are urging residents to avoid unnecessary travel once the storm ramps up and to prepare now before conditions worsen.
Engle said it’s too early to predict whether this might be winter’s last laugh.
“There is some potential for the first half of March to get [some more snow],” Engle said. “But you really can’t say definitively, especially as you get into March. That’s a trickier month.”
This story has been updated with additional information.
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