A snow and ice storm is poised to slam the metropolitan area Tuesday night into Wednesday, and we’ll likely get another wintry wallop this weekend that could leave up to a foot of snow on the ground.
“The next winter storm will hit the New York City area Tuesday night into Wednesday with a new round of travel delays and disruptions to daily activities,” meteorologist Alex Sosnowski said on AccuWeather.com.
“While less snow will fall in the city with the next storm, enough snow and wintry mix will fall at the onset of the storm to make some roads and sidewalks slippery,” he said, predicting a messy morning commute on Wednesday.
Mayor de Blasio, just over a month into his administration, already sounded fed up with having to deal with snowy weather.
“The snowstorm situation is getting a little too common,” he griped during a press conference at City Hall Tuesday, while also lamenting that he has had to shovel his own Park Slope pad out over and over.
“There’s been a lot of shoveling and salting going on. I think I did three rounds of shoveling and three rounds of salting yesterday – this is really obnoxious,” he said with a chuckle.
Nonetheless, he vowed that the city would be prepared despite lackluster snow removal performances on Staten Island during Monday’s storm and on the Upper East Side when it snowed last month.
The Staten Island plowing, he said, “was simply not acceptable, was not handled properly and we’re going to fix it. Every one of these is an opportunity to make adjustments and improve.”
The mayor was looking to rising temperatures as an ally for Tuesday night’s storm.
“We’re preparing right now. We’re hoping the warming temperatures and the rain will help to reduce the impact,” he said.
De Blasio also said the city is considering rerouting plow trucks, an idea he said was first hatched under the Bloomberg administration.
“I don’t expect that’s something that we’ll be able to do immediately. It’s a bigger examination of our system to make decisions about whether we can come up with a better game plan.”
The latest storm is expected to start out as snow Tuesday night and change over to rain in New York City and along coastal areas.
Inland areas north and west of the city could get all snow, though accumulations are predicted to be in the low single digits.
It’s a different story upstate, however, where as much as 20 inches are expected to bury the Buffalo area.
There were only scattered cancellations and delays at LaGuardia, Kennedy and Newark airports Tuesday morning, according to FlightAware.com.
That could change dramatically come Sunday, however, when the third winter storm in a week will arrive packing strong winds and a foot or more of snow on the tri-state area, forecasters said.
“The storm scheduled for late [this] weekend may bring enough wind to cause coastal flooding at times of high tide Sunday night into Monday. Where the wind hits with trees and power lines weighed down with wet snow and ice, power outages are possible,” Sosnowski warned.