A “significant winter storm” is expected to hit the city Saturday night, bringing snow, freezing rain and sleet.
“We have a complex weather system coming,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a news conference Friday afternoon. “This is going to be an ever-changing situation.”
A winter weather advisory is in effect from 4 p.m. on Saturday to 4 a.m. on Sunday, and the National Weather Service is forecasting about 1 to 3 inches of snow to fall overnight.
Snow will begin to fall after 5 p.m., but will become heavier as it gets later. New Yorkers can expect snow, freezing rain and sleet throughout most of the night until the storm switches to mostly rain early Sunday morning.
Sunday could see a shift between rain and freezing rain throughout the day, according to the National Weather Service. In addition, temperatures will drop significantly and winds will pick up, with gusts up to 30 mph.
“We’re going to be looking at downed trees, downed power lines and icy conditions,” Deputy Mayor of Operations Laura Anglin said Friday, warning New Yorkers to stay off the roads and reduce their time outside.
Sunday night through Monday night will be the coldest of the season so far. The low temperature Sunday night will be around 8 degrees but the wind chill value will make it feel between zero and minus 10. The high temperature on Monday will be about 16 degrees with blustery winds up to 20 mph, the NWS predicts.
The Department of Sanitation will have nearly 700 salt spreaders and 1,600 plows in service, Commissioner Kathryn Garcia said on Friday.
The plows will primarily be needed Saturday night, Garcia said, but the spreaders will likely keep running through Monday morning.
“The only thing that we really have that’s gonna attack ice is gonna be the salt,” she said.
The mayor assured New Yorkers that the city is prepared to handle the storm and said it is “an entirely different situation than what we experienced in November,” when the city got much more snow than what was initially predicted.
“The night before, we were being told one inch of snow,” de Blasio said, but there ended up being about half a foot in parts of the city. “That was a freak storm by definition.”
In this case, he said, the forecast is enough “to throw everything we got into the situation.”
