The city that never sleeps is about to be buried under a mountain of slop, according to meteorologists.
On Tuesday morning WINS-1010 News Radio reported that it was only 15 degrees Farenheit in the city and even colder out in the suburbs.
While city residents had for the most part managed to dig out from a weekend snowfall layered with inches-thick ice, they were warned to prepare to be hit again.
High temperatures in New York expected to reach a “heatwave” of 26 degrees would really reach only the single digits when the wind chill factor was figured in. The “real feel” on Tuesday would be “only one degree,” said the meteorologist. For Israelis, it’s minus 17 degrees Centigrade.
(As a means of contrast, in the southern Israeli Negev city of Arad Tuesday at midday, people were walking around without coats under sunny skies and a temperature of about 68 degrees Farenheit.)
“It’s bitter cold” outside and there’s “ice and slush to deal with” the newscaster told listeners. “You can hear the ice and slush crunch under your shoes,” she said. The biggest accomplishment for some pedestrians was “staying upright while walking on the sidewalk,” one local interviewee said.
Snow showers were predicted for Wednesday, “one inch” of snow on the plate for Thursday and a brand-new storm forecast for Friday, possibly lasting for the duration of the weekend.
The past weekend’s storm brought a slushy mix that left nine to 16 inches of wintry junk in the New England region, where three feet of snow piled up just last week.
In Brooklyn residents paid others as much as $100 or more to shovel or plow away between four to six inches of the mess. Drivers took up to half an hour to melt the thick ice on their car windows before heading out on to the slippery roads.
On Monday, the National Weather Service had issued a winter storm warning for more than 20 counties in New York State, forecasting up to 16 inches of snow for the eastern Catskill Mountains. Some Long Island schools were either closed or opened late – by early afternoon central Massachusetts was already under a foot of snow.
Rush hour commuters were stopped in their tracks on a packed subway train that lost power in Manhattan. They were stranded for more than two hours with five other trains backed up behind them, waiting until the train was towed to a station.