The National Weather Service is warning of “considerable disruption to transportation and daily life” in the New York metro area Sunday into Monday, amid predictions of 6 to 12 inches of snowfall by the end of the storm.
And while meteorologists say freezing rain may temper those totals along the coasts, frigid temperatures are likely to cover the region in a sheet of ice, making for even worse driving conditions than standard snowfall.
“That being said, it is going to snow all day on Sunday,” said Matt Wunsch, a meteorologist with NWS. “ There will be a pretty decent accumulation ahead of any mixing if it does occur.”
Still, he cautioned the forecast could still change over the next 48 hours.
Sorry kids, no snow day off from school
New York City public school students will have school Monday despite the forecast, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Friday.
Mamdani said school will either be held in person or via remote learning, depending on how the weather shapes up into the weekend. City Hall will make the call on how to hold school by noon Sunday, he added.
The mayor urged New Yorkers to stay home once the snow starts to accumulate.
“I want to encourage New Yorkers to do something they don’t often have the luxury of doing, which to take a breath and stay home, stay indoors, stay off the roads, watch the snow come down, watch the worst possible reality show you can find and take some time away from the roads,” Mamdani said at the city’s emergency management headquarters Friday morning.
In earlier media appearances Friday, he said a student who found his wife’s email wrote to her advocating for closing city schools Monday, but to no avail.
Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency across New York state starting Friday and continuing throughout the weekend, saying this would make it easier to deploy resources to areas in need. She warned the extreme cold and significant snowfall expected across the state would create dangerous conditions for anyone planning to go outdoors.
“Hunker down, change your habits and try to minimize your time outside,” the governor said at a briefing Friday morning. She added that she has authorized all state employees to work remotely Monday and encouraged other employers to follow suit.
New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill had a similar message for residents as Mamdani and Hochul, though she had not declared a state of emergency as of noon Friday.
“Make a plan to stay home. Make a plan to catch up on your reading, watch the football, play some board games with your kids, but this is a good weekend to stay in, and off the roads,” she said in a video message on social media Thursday night.
Mamdani’s announcement on school operations marked a shift from statements Thursday where he seemed nostalgic about his own snow days spent sledding and packing trash cans with snow as a kid in the city.
He said he considered the constraints of the school calendar: State law requires 180 instructional days per year, and the 2025-26 calendar only just meets that target, given the addition of new holidays in recent years. That has contributed to city officials’ past decisions to keep schools open during snow days.
But the mayor said snow days off from school are among life’s joys — and left open the possibility they could return at some point.
“I will not tell you it’s the end of anything,” Mamdani said. “We will operate under the constraints that we have from the state, but we also acknowledge that those are constraints that could change at some point in the future.”
High schoolers and students who attend schools for grades 6 through 12 were already scheduled to be off Monday so that teachers can engage in professional development.
In an interview on 1010 WINS on Friday morning, Mamdani said students will be told to take their school-issued devices home with them for the weekend in case the city opts for remote learning on Monday.
He said officials will be testing remote-learning tech over the weekend to make sure there won’t be any login issues, and making contingency plans for staggered school start times.
But remote learning has been glitchy in the past, causing headaches for students, teachers and families across the city. At the mayor’s press conference Friday, Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels referred to one such day in 2024 as a “day that will live in infamy.”
Samuels said the city’s education department has already held simulations and stress tests of the tech and increased the capacity to handle remote learning.
“We now have the capacity of having a million students logging on at the same time,” he said, adding that some teachers may stagger schedules, or invite families to practice with the tech on Sunday.
“I’m very confident … this is going to be successful,” he said.
Families will be notified of the city’s plans via email and phone calls, Mamdani said. People can also sign up for official alerts via the Notify NYC system, he added.
Some parents lamented the decision to keep school in session.
“These kids should have a day off. They want to build a snowman,” said Lawanda Joyner, an East Harlem parent of an elementary student.
Some teachers reported getting mixed messages from school leaders about how much instruction they will have to give on Monday.
“Snow days should be snow days, and the use of remote instruction is an empty gesture toward fulfilling the state’s already-compromised 180-day instructional requirement,” said David Bloomfield, an education and law professor at Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center.
This story has been updated with additional information.
