Crown Heights Blanketed by Snow

Mayor Bill de Blasio is optimistic that New York City will be “largely back to normal” on Friday, including the reopening of public schools, after a fast and powerful winter storm walloped the area Thursday.

“This is an unusually fast, intense storm,” de Blasio said during a news conference Thursday. “We’ve had two hours in a row where we’ve had three inches of snow and that is unusual. We have a lot of storms that go a whole day, you talk about one or two inches an hour, but to have three inches two hours in a row is a real extraordinary level of accumulation.”

Snow totals across the area were still climbing Thursday afternoon.

As of 1 p.m., LaGuardia and Kennedy airports were seeing 9.5 inches and 7.4 inches, respectively, the NWS said. Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn had as many as 10 inches of snow by noon and Central Park in Manhattan had 9 inches by 1 p.m. Staten Island saw 8.5 inches by 11 a.m. and the Bronx stood at about 6.4 inches around 9 a.m., though Barthold said she expects both boroughs to have significantly higher snow totals by the end of the storm.

The Sanitation Department deployed more than 2,300 snow plows and spreaders to all five boroughs, hitting 90 percent of all streets by 7 a.m.

“We are full force, at least until probably the weekend,” Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia told CBS2 Thursday. “We know that we are the first responders in an event like this.”

The mayor urged New Yorkers to stay off the roads to facilitate street cleaning efforts.

“If people keep their cars off the streets sanitation can plow and plow and plow again.”

New York City’s public schools are closed. After-school programs, adult education, and PSAL activities are also cancelled.

Schools are expected to reopen Friday.