New York City is bracing for “Polar Vortex: Part 2” — with more cold, more wind and, especially, more snow.
January’s second arctic blast, coming two weeks after the first polar vortex, will dump up to 6 inches of snow on Manhattan on Tuesday and as much as a foot on parts of Queens, Long Island, New Jersey and Connecticut, AccuWeather senior meteorologist Bob Smerbeck predicted.
The forecast took a turn for the worse from Sunday to Monday, he said, with a storm front “intensifying a little closer to the coast” than had been expected.
It’ll be the second storm on Mayor de Blasio’s watch.
“The first one was so exciting, we thought we’d try another,” Hizzoner joked Monday, before vowing to be “very personally involved in the preparations.”
“We’re preparing with the idea in mind it could be like the one from two weeks ago,” he said.
The National Weather Service posted a winter storm watch for the region effective Tuesday afternoon through Tuesday night and warning of significant snow, sleet or ice accumulations.
Temps will plunge Tuesday, with a high in the mid- 20s and a low of 5 degrees overnight, with winds gusting to 30 mph.
It will be even icier Wednesday, with a high of just 18 and temps again bottoming out at 5 overnight. They won’t climb above freezing until Saturday.
The mayor said the city was prepared.
“We have activated all of our emergency-preparation systems. Office of Emergency Management is preparing now to be fully operational by morning. We’ll be having all of the agencies coordinating again,” he said.