‘Super Bomb’ Blizzard Aims Heavy Snow at New York, Northeast

Brian K. Sullivan and María Paula Mijares Torres

Sun, February 22, 2026 at 5:13 AM GMT+9 3 min read

Photographer: Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images

(Bloomberg) – A powerful winter storm that may turn into a “super bomb” threatens New York City and the Northeast with heavy, wet snow by the foot starting Sunday and tropical storm-strength wind gusts that are likely to drop power lines, ground planes and make travel life-threatening.

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Mayor Zohran Mamdani warned New Yorkers there’s “a slight chance we may see up to 20 inches, if not more” and that the blizzard may be more dangerous than a storm that hit the city in late January.

“I am asking all New Yorkers to stay inside and stay off the roads for your safety,” Mamdani said at a news conference Saturday. “These have the potential to be even more hazardous conditions than we faced the last time around.”

New York subway trains may run with delays and the Long Island Railroad will run on a weekend schedule Monday, Metropolitan Transit Authority chairman Janno Lieber said. New Jersey also declared a state of emergency.

The blizzard warning stretches from New Haven, Connecticut, south to Delaware, including New York and Long Island starting 6 a.m. Sunday. It’s likely to be extended into southern New England and Boston.

The storm is forecast to strengthen so quickly Sunday — with its central pressure, a measure of strength, dropping 24 millibars in 12 hours — that the US Weather Prediction Center is calling it “a super bomb,” said Brian Hurley, a senior branch forecaster at the agency.

“It is a true nor’easter,” Hurley said. “It is going to stay awhile, too. It is going to hang around for much of Monday. The highest amounts are projected for central and eastern Long Island and coastal New Jersey where there is 20 inches in the forecast.”

NYC Infrastructure

New York City officials will deploy 2,600 sanitation workers in 12-hours shifts as snowfall begins Sunday morning, though there “will be no cleanups over the course of this storm,” Mamdani said.

“Our focus over the course of this storm is not going to be on physical infrastructure,” he said. “It’s going to be on people getting homeless New Yorkers inside.

With temperatures near freezing, the snow will be wet and heavy. Combined with winds gusting as high as 55 miles (88 kilometers) per hour, it’s almost certain to topple power lines and trees, causing outages.

Sunday flight cancellations are certain to rise, especially in the busy New York City area, causing a cascade of disruptive travel trouble at the start of the work week.

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Ground travel will be dangerous, and the Weather Service warns anyone venturing out to take a survival kit with them.

Amtrak said Saturday that it will make service adjustments to some routes in the Northeast Corridor on Sunday and Monday.

While the forecast isn’t as certain for Washington, DC, and points south, “I feel really good about east central New Jersey up to Long Island and I feel good about New York City as well,” Hurley said.

The worst of the snow will be along coastal areas, which can lead to forecast glitches if there’s a jolt in the storm track. While that happened a few years ago when New York ended up with far less than a forecasted several feet of snow, Hurley said he isn’t counting on it this time.

Snow will start falling in New York late Sunday morning and build with intensity, but “it doesn’t really start cranking until the late afternoon and overnight,” Hurley said. “Most of the heaviest is going to be between midnight and 6 a.m.”

In Boston, the worst of the storm will likely arrive about 6 a.m. Monday.

–With assistance from Lauren Rosenthal.

(Updates with Mamdani comments starting in second paragraph.)

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