The wild winds and swirling snow seemed like the perfect reason to stay home. But there were George and Natividad Sanchez, bundled up and braving the winter weather.
They came out, despite blizzard warnings and forecasts of more than a foot of snow, to keep 2-year-old daughter Natali happy. Her day care program, like city schools and courts and even the zoo, had closed Wednesday over weather concerns. That meant no trip to see “Sesame Street Live: When Elmo Grows Up.”
With their workplaces also closed, the Manhattan parents scrambled to buy their own tickets to the show. “I didn’t want to disappoint her,” George Sanchez said, as the family arrived for the show in parkas and scarves.
Parents all over the region were dealing with an unusual bit of midweek family time, as harsh winter conditions disrupted normal schedules.
New York City’s 1.1 million public school students were enjoying a rare snow day, after officials decided to cancel classes in anticipation of anywhere from 10 to 15 inches of snow coming down.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said school would be back in session Thursday, adding that the snowstorm had been “a bit of an on-again, off-again affair.”
“After a brief lull, snowfall at mid-afternoon reached the intensity that made the decision to postpone school the right one,” he said, but emphasized that students need to get back to class.
“Sorry about that for those who wanted another day off,” the mayor said at a news conference Wednesday.
Bloomberg said the city was working overtime to clear streets and major thoroughfares would be plowed by Thursday morning. The Department of Sanitation deployed about 1,600 plows, and 2,100 workers were on 12-hour shifts.
Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty asked New Yorkers to be patient for another day in dealing with piles of snow at street corners and bus stops.
“For people that are walking, it’s going to be very sloppy,” Doherty said. “That’s going to take a little while.”
New Yorkers tried to make the most of the rupture in their routines Wednesday.
Tina Eng Caban spent the day with her 4-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter, trying to keep them occupied with movies and some time spent outside in the falling snow.
“I’m ready to go back” to work, the Brooklyn mom joked.
At Central Park’s Pilgrim Hill near Fifth Avenue, sledders were lined up waiting their turn.
Deborah Quinn went sledding with her two boys, aged 5 and 9, who go to two public schools in Manhattan.
“We took out our 46-year-old Flexible Flyer, went to Kmart and got the last snow boots in size 1,” she said. “When I found out yesterday that they had canceled school, I thought, ‘This is just silly.’ It seems a little bit overreacting. … Most of the kids walk to school or take the subway. It’s not like we’re out in the suburbs where we’re snaking down the highway.”
By about 7 p.m, 9 inches had fallen in Central Park and 8 inches at John F. Kennedy International Airport, according to the National Weather Service. Parts of Long Island had 6 to 12 inches of snow.
The snowfall was expected to continue until about midnight, then taper off, the agency said. It forecasts 10 to 15 inches of total accumulation for most of New York City, though Staten Island could see up to 17 inches.
The storm forced the cancellation of hundreds of flights, and it closed most of the region’s courts, the United Nations, and the Bronx Zoo and other Wildlife Conservation Society parks. A Thursday event with penguins at the Central Park Zoo was postponed.
Many people stayed home from work – Metro-North Railroad reported that from 6:15 a.m. to 10 a.m., it carried 43,000 customers into Grand Central, down 39 percent from a normal weekday. The Long Island Rail Road parking lot in Farmingdale was only about half-full by the end of the morning rush hour.
But others braved the conditions to make the trek to the job.
Harry Tucker, 44, a bond trader from Bronxville waiting for a commuter train in Pelham, said, “I work on commission. If I don’t work I don’t get paid.”
Zaki Mohaed, a pushcart vendor, arrived at his regular spot on West 33rd Street at 1:30 a.m., two hours earlier than usual, to beat the traffic from Queens.
He might have considered staying home. But “I didn’t cancel my (pastry) order; everything is fresh,” he said.
Kim Baines, 31, who was on her way to work as a security guard at Covenant House, said her morning commute from Queens was normal and wasn’t worried about getting back in the evening.
But when told that the forecast called for near-blizzard conditions, she paused briefly and said: “I’m not worried. I think it should be fun!”
Air traffic was “very minimal,” said Steve Coleman, spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. He said most airlines already had canceled all flights.
In addition, high winds were forcing 20 mph speed limits on some bridges, he said.
To the north, schools were closed in most parts of the Hudson Valley. Smaller amounts of snow were expected well upstate, with just 4 inches forecast for Buffalo.
All branches of the New York Public Library also were closed.