NYC Snow: City Preps For Blizzard Though Just Flurries Forecast

NEW YORK CITY — A snow alert was issued for New York City Tuesday, despite forecasters predicting little snow to accumulate, one year after "bad luck" slammed the city with an unexpected six inches of snow and left New Yorkers stranded in the streets for hours.

"There are really significant transitions that can happen in weather, it can go from very innocuous to significant," Department of Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia explained at a press conference Monday afternoon.

"Forecasts change significantly back and forth. Yesterday, there was no snow, earlier this week we had significant accumulation."

The city's Department of Sanitation will have a team of 4,300 people, 725 salt spreaders and 318,000 tons of salt ready to handle the tenth of an inch of snow city and national National forecasters predicts will hit after 2 p.m.

Public schools will remain open but Garcia said Sanitation will provide weather updates to the Department of Education as needed.

"We're going to over-communicate," she said.

Emergency Management Commissioner Deanne Criswell warned New Yorkers to prepare for slippery and delayed commutes Tuesday.

“The temperatures will also drop drastically," Criswell said. "Be sure to bundle up."

Trash pickups may be delayed if Sanitation workers need to be rerouted, said the Sanitation head.

Rain predicted for Tuesday mornings mean city workers cannot pre-salt and Garcia urged construction workers not to flood concrete with water that might cause ice as temperatures drop, Garcia said.

"We're watching weather or not we end up with icing conditions," said Garcia. "We'll have drying before the really cold weather comes in."

Tuesday's predicted snowfall comes almost exactly one year after the city prepared for minimal snowfall and wound up with a blizzard that wreaked havoc on New York.

Poor road conditions caused backups in Penn Station, Port Authority and on the George Washington that stranded New Jersey commuters for up to six hours and left one driver named Allison fearful she'd have to spend the night sleeping in her car.

At the time, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city was caught in a "perfect storm" of unfortunate circumstances."

"We got just every form of bad luck we could have gotten," the mayor said.