NYC braces for 6 inches of snow, brutal cold as polar vortex blasts region. Here’s when it will start
A powerful polar vortex hit the Big Apple on Sunday, bringing with it inches of snow, bone-chilling temperatures and frigid wind chills that will stick around through the coming week.
Forecasters declared a winter weather advisory for New York City from 1 p.m. until early Monday morning — and the snow had begun to fall as the sun set across the tri-state area Sunday evening, coating the city and its suburbs in layers of white.
By the time it’s done, the five boroughs, coastal Connecticut and Long Island will likely see between 3 to 5 inches, according to the National Weather Service.
Meanwhile, New Jersey had declared a state of emergency — parts of the Garden State may get walloped by 5-8 inches of snow, with the white stuff falling at rates of one to two inches per hour, the weather service said.
The snow had already caused disruptions at the three airports in the greater New York City area Sunday night.
Hundreds of flights at LaGuardia, John F. Kennedy, and Newark Liberty International Airports were delayed by up to two-and-a-half hours or outright canceled due to the inclement weather, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
At LaGuardia, 261 flights both into and out of the Queens airport were canceled Sunday and 219 were delayed, according to FlightAware. Many arriving flights were diverted for the time being or landed elsewhere until further notice, according to the LaGuardia flight tracker.
Over at JFK Airport, travelers were met with a similar nightmare scenario with 159 cancellations and 387 delays including both incoming and departing flights, FlightAware data shows.
Newark was in a similar position with the winter weather, grounding 260 flights and delaying 240 more flights into and out of the New Jersey airport.
Locally, MTA buses were running with significant delays due to snowy roads across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx and speed limits were lowered to 25 mph over the George Washington and Bayonne Bridges while salting operations were ongoing, the NYC Emergency Management said in a 9:20 p.m. update.
Over 650 New Yorkers had no power at that time, the agency added.
The flakes will likely stop before midnight, but the accumulation will stick around for a bit thanks to arctic temps in the low teens forecast through Wednesday.
“As we wake up tomorrow morning, the snow will have stopped — but the bitter cold will set in,” said Cody Braud, a Fox Weather meteorologist, said Sunday.
“It will be a dangerous cold that will keep snowpack lingering around for the early part of the week.”
Bitter winds will move in and wind chills may drop as low as minus-15 degrees, the weather service said, and the promise of 20 mph wind gusts throughout the week prompted a “Code Blue” cold weather alert from city officials.
On Monday morning, temperatures will hover around 21 degrees, Braud said.
It won’t be much better the rest of the week — morning temps will be an icy 13 degrees every day through Thursday, he said.
“It’ll likely get below zero when you factor in the wind on Tuesday morning … and we get below zero on Wednesday morning as well,” Braud added. “Those are the coldest mornings of the week.”
During the day, temperatures won’t rise out of the 20s. Thursday could be the warmest, with the mercury expected to hit all of 26 degrees, Braud said.
About a half-foot of snow will also cover Washington, DC and the I-95 corridor from Philadelphia to Boston.
Mayor Adams on Saturday warned New Yorkers to plan for widespread disruptions on the roads, urging locals to use public transportation and limit their travels.
With the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, schools will be closed and plows will be able to better clear the roads, Adams said.