24 hours from now, city work crews will begin treating the city's bridges, highways and side streets in the first phase in the city's battleplan for all five boroughs.
N.J. Burkett has the latest on how NYC is preparing for the snow storm.
The salt trucks will roll out on Saturday.
Pre-snow treatment will begin on roads on Friday on all highways, major streets and bike lanes.
About 2,000 sanitation workers will be on 12-hour shifts beginning Saturday morning.
More than 2,000 plows, 700 salt spreaders, 700 million pounds of salt on hand for the weekend.
"You're going to see a massive response to what really is one of the biggest storms the city has seen in years," Joshua Goodman with NYC Department of Sanitation said.
Sanitation commanders are determined to keep the city's streets and highways passable and to keep the buses moving. As for closing the schools on Monday, Mayor Mamdani says the decision will not be an easy one.
"Parents feel one way about this. Students feel very differently about this. What I want to make sure, however, is that we are making a decision that does not have a massive impact on people's day to day lives, not only this coming next few days, but also for the school year in its entirety," Mamdani said.
Snowstorms have a way of punishing mayors who miscalculate.
In 1969, a blizzard left much of the city snowed-in for days and nearly ended the political career of Mayor John Lindsay.
When a similar storm hit in 2010, Mayor Michael Bloomberg was in Bermuda and later called it his "character-building moment."
In 2018, Mayor Bill de Blasio grossly underestimated a storm and commuters were stranded in every corner of the city.
In 2024, Mayor Eric Adams ordered students to learn from home, and the system crashed.
Mayor Mamdani says he's confident.
"What we are asking of New Yorkers is to take every precaution they can in their own life and what we will deliver to them is a city government that is going to meet them. They're doing everything in our power to make this a weekend that they will not have to remember any months from now," Mamdani said.
New Yorkers who spoke to Eyewitness News seem willing to trust their new mayor.
"Yeah, I think he's got it under control." one Brooklyn resident said.
"The city has an infrastructure in place, regardless of who the mayor is. That is a well-oiled machine. I've seen the orange salt trucks usually poised, usually waiting to roll. And I think the city has well-entrenched battle plans because after all these years of constant snowstorms, I think we have a pretty good infrastructure set to go," a Queens resident said.
