The storm, a huge whitish smudge on meteorologists’ radar screens that stretched more than 700 miles from Indiana to Long Island, promised to be the first test of New York City’s new mayor, Bill de Blasio. In his last job, as the city’s public advocate, Mr. de Blasio was critical of the response under his predecessor, Michael R. Bloomberg, when plows were slow to reach some neighborhoods, particularly in the boroughs outside Manhattan, after a storm in late 2010.
On Thursday, less than 24 hours after being sworn in as mayor, Mr. de Blasio met with the sanitation commissioner, John J. Doherty, a temporary holdover from the Bloomberg administration, and declared that the city was “ready for whatever hits us.” Transportation officials ordered subway trains parked indoors for the night, leaving only local trains running on some lines.
Though officials said there would be no field trips or after-school activities for public school students on Friday, Mr. de Blasio and the new schools chancellor, Carmen Fariña, put off a decision about whether to close city schools until Friday morning. That delayed the answer to a question that school-age friends of Mr. de Blasio’s 16-year-old son, Dante, had been asking on Facebook. “Everyone is asking me this,” Dante wrote on Facebook. “I have no idea Old man winter will decide.” But he said he was trying to “convince my dad.”
The mayor said at a morning briefing on Thursday that closing the schools was “by definition a game-day decision.” Hours later, he declared: “At this moment, you should assume that schools will be open” on Friday.
The storm’s late-day arrival in New York made Thursday a day of anticipation under a gloomy, gunmetal sky. The storm had swirled and blustered across the Midwest, driving already-cold temperatures even lower. In Embarrass, Minn., the temperature sank to 46 degrees below zero. The temperature in Central Park dropped to 22 degrees at 9 p.m. The forecast called for snow through the night and into the morning on Friday, with five to nine inches expected to pile up in the city and more on Long Island.
“We have literally all hands on deck,” Mr. de Blasio said. For starters, he urged New Yorkers to stay off the streets so the Sanitation Department would have “the optimal conditions to work.”
Officials said that 450 salt spreaders had been out since early Thursday morning and 1,700 sanitation trucks had been outfitted with plows. But Mr. Doherty said that even with all the equipment the city had marshaled, his agency faced a daunting job as it worked to clear the streets through the night. He pleaded for patience.
“A lot of people expect in New York City to see blacktop all the time,” Mr. Doherty said. “It’s going to take us a while.” He explained that salt, a major weapon in the fight to keep snow from sticking on slippery streets, was less effective in extreme cold.
The wind that propelled the storm posed another problem, officials said: Blowing snow could cover streets again moments after they were plowed.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York declared a state of emergency and ordered several major highways shut down from midnight to 5 a.m. on Friday, including the Long Island Expressway and the New York State Thruway south of Albany. He announced similar restrictions for Interstate 84, which runs through Dutchess, Orange and Putnam Counties in the central Hudson Valley. Trucks and other commercial vehicles were banned from I-84 at 5 p.m. Thursday, he said.
The governor made plans to shut down the Long Island Expressway overnight, starting at the border between Queens and Nassau County, but the Northern and Southern Parkways remained open. “The parkways don’t have the same vulnerability to blowing snow as the L.I.E.,” he said in a conference call.
Other state officials said drivers who ventured onto roads that had been ordered closed could face a misdemeanor charge.
The storm was a classic nor’easter, a volatile brew of cold air from the Midwest and Canada that collided with warmer, moist air that had been circulating on the East Coast. It left a trail of traffic accidents across Michigan and Ohio and stranded thousands of airline passengers before the weekend crush of holiday travelers heading home.
In Chicago, where more than seven inches of snow had fallen, more than 300 flights were canceled at O’Hare International Airport on Thursday. That was in addition to the 635 flights grounded there on Wednesday.
Nationally, more than 6,700 flights were delayed on Thursday and more than 2,100 were canceled, according to Flightaware.com. Airlines canceled all flights scheduled to leave Logan International Airport in Boston after 9 p.m. Thursday.
Officials urged commuters to go home early on Thursday and to take Friday off if they could. In New York, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said it was salting train platforms in subway stations and sending “de-icers” and “snow and ice-busting equipment” to keep outdoor subway tracks, switches and third rails clear as the snow fell.
Platforms on the Metro-North Railroad and the Long Island Rail Road were also being salted, the transit agency said, and the railroads were turning on devices to heat their switches, lubricate them and treat them with chemicals to prevent freezing.
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