OK Zohran, so you aced the storm.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani managed to successfully weather the storm – at least so far. 

From the early hours of Sunday morning to well into the evening, Mamdani traversed the city, shoveling snow, greeting and thanking sanitation workers, posing for photo ops, providing updates via television interviews and hosting a news conference. Tackling this weekend’s storm, which dumped a foot of snow on the city, was the first big challenge of the new mayor’s tenure. And while managing the piles of snow and bitter cold will continue to be a challenge in the days ahead, Mamdani seems to have emerged from this first governing crucible without making any major mistakes. Queens Borough President Donovan Richards lauded the effort as an A to Gothamist. “Mamdani Clears Early Hurdles as Storm Bears Down on New York,” read The New York Times’ headline. Even some of Mamdani’s skeptics offered tentative praise.

“I really can’t complain,” Diane Savino, a former state senator and senior adviser to former Mayor Eric Adams, told City & State. “I saw him ever present. They used to make fun of Eric for doing that too, but the truth is that’s what the mayor’s job is. Get your appropriate windbreaker on and be out there. You are the commander in chief and I think from that perspective, he clearly passed his first big test.”

“Credit where due, looks like @NYCMayor is handling this storm very well so far,” former Adams staffer Benny Polatseck wrote on X Sunday afternoon.

Addressing reporters Monday, Mamdani trumpeted the hard work of city workers and stressed the need for New Yorkers to look after one another as a Code Blue alert remains in effect. He said over 5,000 sanitation workers traversed the city’s 6,000 miles of roadway multiple times Sunday, plowing snow and dispensing salt. More than 170 people were moved to shelters over the weekend.

“The city did well. There was an abnormal amount of snow and the markets opened up, the trains are running, and the DSNY is rocking and rolling,” former Republican Council Member Joe Borelli told City & State. “All in all it was a positive day for the new administration.”

The storm still posed a major challenge. At least seven people died over the weekend, some of whom had been in homeless shelters in the past. While Mamdani said it wasn’t immediately clear whether their deaths could be attributed to the cold, state Sen. Jessica Ramos said that one of the individuals, a man in Queens, froze to death. Some people on social media complained that roads weren’t being plowed quickly enough. City Council Speaker Julie Menin expressed concern about “a lack of clarity and coordination” to residents who’d been impacted by a fire in the Bronx that killed a woman Sunday.

“There are areas where emergency response has been stretched and needs to improve, and the Council will be closely engaged in addressing those gaps,” she told the Times.

And of course at least one group of New Yorkers weren’t pleased with Mamdani’s performance: the many school students who’d hoped the weather meant they’d get a traditional snow day. With city leaders citing a state mandate that requires a certain number of instructional days, public schools pivoted to remote learning Monday instead. (Students attending high school or schools that only serve grades 6 through 12 were spared due to a previously scheduled professional development day.)

Visiting a remote classroom Monday morning, Mamdani re-upped his offer to students that they could chuck a snowball at him if they see him outside. While he told reporters that no kids had taken a shot at him just yet, the day was young. “A number of the kids this morning were very excited about it, so I feel like it could occur at some point,” Mamdani said. “I'm on my toes.”