It’s too late for a white Christmas, but New Yorkers could be in for a snowy post-holiday weekend.
City Department of Sanitation workers are on double duty Friday, as a winter storm threatens to blanket the five boroughs with as much as 9 inches of snow.
According to an advisory from the department, snow could start dumping on the Big Apple as early as 1 p.m., with precipitation expected to continue through Saturday afternoon.
The advisory says the heaviest downfall is likely between 8 p.m. Friday and 1 a.m. Saturday, and the department encouraged all New Yorkers to stay off the roads as much as possible to allow for snow removal operations, with between 3 and 9 inches of powder expected.
To that end, the Sanitation Department’s trash collectors are being tapped to work “extended shifts to both pick up post-holiday trash and clear the roads for post-holiday travel.”
In addition to thousands of plow trucks, the department has more than 700 salt spreaders ready to be deployed on city roads, highways and bike lanes as soon as white stuff starts coming down from the sky. More than 700 million pounds of salt is on hand for the operation, officials said.
Because of the extent of the forecasted snowfall, additional city agencies, like the NYPD and the Transportation, Parks and Environmental Protection departments, may be called in to help fight the storm, Sanitation officials said.
It’s common for the mayor to hold weather briefings ahead of major snowfalls in the city.
Mayor Adams, who’s leaving office Wednesday, didn’t have any weather briefing Friday. But he briefly addressed the inclement weather at the outset of an unrelated Friday afternoon event at Gracie Mansion, saying the snow could hit especially hard in “northeastern Queens and northern New York City.”
While he said he anticipated “a snowy, fun-filled weekend,” Adams also urged New Yorkers to rely on public transit if they need to travel and follow updates from NotifyNYC, the city’s alert service.
