It is a test faced by every New York City mayor — old and young, Republican and Democrat, technocrat and ideologue — usually early in the first term: a snowstorm that threatens to hobble the city and its congested streets.
This weekend, New York’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, will be expected to snap into action as the city receives as much as a foot of snow. And he seems keenly aware of the pitfalls of mishandling it.
“I knew this moment would come,” Mr. Mamdani, a Democrat, said during an unrelated news conference on Wednesday, when asked whether he planned to give the city’s children a snow day.
A day later, at another news conference, he addressed the coming snow at the top of his remarks, prefacing an announcement about new youth clinics at a Brooklyn hospital with the granular details of how his administration plans to handle the storm.
“While we cannot control how much snow will actually fall this weekend, we can control how we prepare for and respond to this storm,” Mr. Mamdani said.
The city is expecting six to 12 inches of snow, or more, from Saturday night into Monday morning, with the heaviest snow expected on Sunday. Highways, streets and bike lanes will be brined in advance, Mr. Mamdani said. Some 2,000 sanitation workers were getting ready for 12-hour shifts — “a snow-clearing fleet,” he said — and 700 salt spreaders will be on hand for the operation.
The mayor implored New Yorkers to do their grocery shopping ahead of time and to sign up for free emergency text message alerts from the city. He also warned that he was not inclined to close schools.
(On Friday, City Hall and the Department of Education plan to ask principals to inform parents that their children will be sent home for the weekend with equipment for virtual learning, in case it is in place on Monday, according to Dora Pekec, a spokeswoman for Mr. Mamdani.)
The unremarkable public service announcement seemed to signify an understanding by Mr. Mamdani, 34, that his grander agenda cannot succeed if he does not get the basics of municipal governance right.
“The bread-and-butter parts of being the mayor — public safety, snowstorms, school issues — are always going to be front and center with New Yorkers about what they think of you,” Chris Coffey, a political strategist and onetime adviser to former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, said.
“And if you start to suffer in those places,” he added, “it makes it harder for them to give you the benefit of the doubt on all the other things.”
Even Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an ideological ally of Mr. Mamdani who leads a national progressive movement, has warned him about the importance of properly handling snowstorms, a lesson Mr. Sanders learned when he was mayor of Burlington, Vt., according to a video of an exchange between the two politicians.
Mr. Mamdani has been thinking about winter weather since at least last month, when he announced that the city’s acting sanitation commissioner, Javier Lojan, the official most directly responsible for handling snowstorms, and Zach Iscol, the emergency management commissioner, whose agency sends out advisories to the public, would remain in their jobs until the end of the snow season.
And last week, as a far less threatening snowstorm began to blanket the city, Mr. Mamdani seemed aware of the need to be proactive, releasing a video urging New Yorkers to be cautious. “Well, New York,” he said. “Say it ain’t snow.”
Snowstorms have stymied many a mayor before Mr. Mamdani.
Mr. Bloomberg famously mishandled a blizzard that paralyzed the city in 2010, at the start of his third term, flying back to the city from his vacation home in Bermuda as the storm bore down on the five boroughs.
Four years later, his successor, Bill de Blasio, was criticized during his first month in office for his administration’s failure to adequately plow the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where many of his political detractors lived. He publicly acknowledged the missteps.
Snowstorm politics in New York City date back to at least February of 1969, when Mayor John V. Lindsay was politically weakened by what was widely regarded as a mismanaged response to a blizzard that dumped 15 inches of snow, killing 42 people and injuring 288 others.
Much of the city’s snow removal equipment was in disrepair at the time because of poor maintenance. It took three days for the city to return to near-normal operation.
Streets in Queens, where half of the people who were killed had lived, remained impassable for an extended period. A visit there by Mr. Lindsay was poorly received and he was booed and called names by residents.
“Are you feeling the weight of history?” a reporter asked Mr. Mamdani on Thursday.
The mayor replied that he fully expected New Yorkers to judge him on how he handled the weather. “Because for so much of what we talk about in politics, what I’ll find from New Yorkers is the questions come back to the things that they experience over a 24-hour period,” he said.
In recent days, Joe Calvello, Mr. Mamdani’s press secretary, has circulated printed news stories among staff members about how Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. de Blasio handled blizzards, in an effort to prevent the same mistakes.
Mr. Mamdani is expected to maintain a strong public presence in the lead-up to the storm, with a live interview on the Weather Channel scheduled for Friday and appearances planned around the city this weekend, Ms. Pekec said.
The new chairman of the City Council’s sanitation committee, Justin Sanchez, said he had been in constant contact with city officials about the storm and was monitoring their performance.
“This snowstorm is a great opportunity for this new administration to demonstrate and show competence,” Mr. Sanchez said, noting some New Yorkers’ concern about Mr. Mamdani’s ability to manage municipal crises, given his age and inexperience.
“This is the true test of the basics of the job that New Yorkers have called on us to do,” Mr. Sanchez said. “At the very essence, it’s city service delivery.”
Dana Rubinstein contributed reporting.
Sally Goldenberg is a Times reporter covering New York City politics and government.
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