The mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, has implemented a citywide emergency declaration and complete travel prohibition because a historic blizzard has started to hit the Tri-State area.
The mayor declared that all city streets and highways, together with bridges, will be closed to non-essential traffic from 9:00 PM Sunday until 12:00 PM Monday during his Sunday evening address to the public.
The order, which the administration described as a necessary measure to protect lives, restricts all personal vehicles, including cars scooters and e-bikes, with exemptions only for emergency responders and critical service workers.
Emergency Directives and Transit Restrictions
The mayor’s executive order creates a temporary lockdown, which restricts movement throughout the city to enable sanitation crews and emergency vehicles to access all streets without obstruction.
Governor Kathy Hochul declared a statewide state of emergency to enable National Guard deployment for response operations, which matched the urgent need of the situation. Officials have confirmed that New York City public schools will transition to a traditional “snow day” on Monday with all remote learning suspended.
The sanitation departments face an urgent challenge because they need to deploy all available snowplows and temporary shovelers for the upcoming storm, which will bring high snowfall rates at its most intense period.
Blizzard Hazards and Meteorological Forecasts
The Meteorological Service has declared its first blizzard warning for the city after almost ten years because of a bomb cyclone, which is expected to deliver two feet of snow to several boroughs.
The National Weather Service has issued a warning about life-threatening whiteout conditions, which will occur with 60-mile-per-hour wind gusts and will result in widespread power outages.
The storm creates chaos throughout the Northeast corridor, while major airports such as JFK and Newark experience thousands of flight cancellations.
The emergency travel ban requires all residents to stay inside their homes until it ends on Monday afternoon because of falling temperatures and coastal flooding, which threatens low-lying areas.
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