It doesn't matter whether the Big Apple gets 2 inches of snow or 2 feet when Winter Storm Fern blows into town on Monday: New York kids won't be getting a traditional snow day, according to Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
"I know, to the disappointment of any student that's watching this right now, Monday is either going to be a remote learning day, or it's going to be an in-person school day," Mamdani said during an appearance on local news station NY1 on Friday.
"It's not going to be a traditional snow day," he added. "That is a determination we've made."
He said that City Hall will make the call by noon on Sunday on whether the city's public school students will need to bundle up to head out to class or if they'll get to log on from home in their pajamas.
However, Mamdani urged New Yorkers to stay home once the snow starts to pile up.
"I want to encourage New Yorkers to do something they don't often have the luxury of doing, which [is] to take a breath and stay home, stay indoors, stay off the roads, watch the snow come down, watch the worst possible reality show you can find and take some time away from the roads," the new mayor said at the city's emergency management headquarters Friday morning, reports Gothamist.
Mamdani, though, said the city's kids are being enterprising about getting a snow day, including one who found his wife Rama's email and asked her to advocate for closing the schools down.
The mayor is facing his first weather-related test in office, with forecasts predicting that the city could see 6-8 inches of snow, and even 10 inches in some places.
Some forecasts are calling for up to 18 inches of snow in New York City.
The heaviest snowfall from the massive storm, which is stretching across the nation, is scheduled to hit the city Sunday afternoon.
Preparations are already underway in New York City, with thousands of sanitation workers ready to start their work to prepare the city for the storm.
"We've already seen, just starting at 6 a.m. today, sanitation workers brining the highways and major roads of our city — all preemptively to prepare for what we're going to see this weekend," Mamdani said, adding that the snow-fighting operation will be extensive.
"Tomorrow, we're going to see 2,000 sanitation workers start on their 12-hour shifts, and we're going to be transforming what is our typical DSNY [New York City Department of Sanitation] operation into the nation's largest snow-fighting operation," the mayor said.
The storm is expected to bring deeply cold temperatures as well.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Friday declared a state of emergency for the full state, and Mamdani insisted the city is well-prepared to hit the first major storm in his administration.
The Big Apple's last snowstorm of this magnitude was in February 2021, when 16.8 inches fell in Central Park over two days.
Hochul, meanwhile, said that the state is expecting more snow "than they were talking about even 24 hours ago, so pay attention to those totals."
She added that up to a foot of snow could be "paralyzing in a dense area like New York City."
"They have not seen snow totals like this in years," said the governor, adding that she's been speaking with Mamdani to give him advice on handling his first snowstorm.
"I let him know that we have a governor who's from Buffalo, and if he wants any tips, to give me a call, and I gave him some of them, and he's ready to go," she said.
"I think we're ready for this, but when you get complacent, that's when you get into trouble."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.