New Orleanians and tourists on Tuesday marked the city’s highest snowfall in decades by skiing down Bourbon Street, walking to neighborhood restaurants that remained open and having a snowball fight in the French Quarter.
The snow brought a certain levity to a city shaken on New Year’s Day by a terrorist attack that killed 14 people and injured dozens more when a pickup truck driver plowed into the crowd on Bourbon Street.
But the winter storm, which dumped up to 10 inches of snow in some areas of New Orleans, also meant extra work for city and state workers.
Local interstates, along with the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway Bridge, were closed due to snow and ice. Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry posted on X urging people to stay off the roads to make way for emergency personnel. “I hope everyone is safe and warm at home with a big pot of gumbo,” he said.
Collin Arnold, New Orleans’ director of homeland security and emergency preparedness, said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon that the city had brought in 14 snow plows with a priority of clearing roads near local hospitals.
“In the next few days there will be a lot of recovery from this as far as the roads are concerned,” he said.
Although no snow is forecast for the rest of this week, temperatures are expected to remain below freezing through Thursday. And the city’s public schools remained closed Wednesday and were expected to close Thursday.
Meanwhile, there’s more work ahead with the Super Bowl, which is expected to draw more than 125,000 revelers to the area, in less than three weeks.
Michael Hecht, state infrastructure coordinator for the Super Bowl, said some contractors tried to get ahead of Tuesday’s storm last weekend. As the city prepared for dropping temperatures, crews worked on paving and lighting installation projects in the French Quarter.
He said planners’ goals were to wrap up as many projects as possible by Jan. 31, because some visitors will start arriving as early as Feb. 1. The city’s schedule took into account weather delays, he said, but work would have to resume by Thursday to stay on track to complete most of it. of the remaining projects.
“To say we’re going to be able to land the plane doesn’t mean we wouldn’t appreciate a slightly longer runway,” Hecht said.
Jay Cicero, chairman of the Super Bowl Host Committee, said in a statement that he was “confident that the teams on the ground will complete these preparations on time and within their original scope.”
In recent years, winter storms have brought hardship to major southern cities. During a 2021 crisis in Texas, more than 200 people died after millions of power customers lost power. Frigid temperatures that year also left many residents and businesses in Jackson, Mississippi, and Shreveport, Louisiana, without running water.
So far, New Orleans has had only a few power outages and no major problems with its water supply. But some leaders have expressed concern about how some of New Orleans’ most vulnerable residents are faring.
Last week, under an emergency order from Landry, the state closed a homeless encampment near the SuperDome. Several were taken by bus to a temporary shelter, a warehouse located several kilometers away.
Landry has described it as an effort to protect the city’s homeless, as well as the city. “It is in the best interest of the safety of all citizens to provide homeless people with a safe and humane shelter as we begin to welcome the world to the city of New Orleans for both Super Bowl LIX and Mardi Gras,” he said in a statement in January. 13. But some New Orleans officials and advocates said the use of a temporary warehouse hurt their efforts to provide long-term housing.
Slim Goodies Diner, in the city’s Uptown district, was one of the few local restaurants that remained open Tuesday.
The restaurant, which was one of the first to open in the city after Hurricane Katrina, has a reputation for weathering storms before evacuation orders and welcoming customers early when they subside.
“We’re known for always being open, no matter what happens,” said owner Deborah Schumacher.
For Hecht, snow is just one more thing the city will survive and welcome with good humor.
“We’re a little tired of the word resilient in this city, because it’s overused and sometimes seems to be an excuse for a lack of preparedness,” he said. “But in this case, we’ll be fine.”
