Hey, New York City, how is that “warm collectivism” under Zohran Mamdani working out for you? Yeah, you’re in the grip of a deep freeze and yet another extreme cold warning, but hey, all that trash piling up has to be blocking the wind, right?

Joking aside, the situation in New York City is pretty serious. That extreme cold warning will see the city experiencing staggering low temperatures and a wind chill that will take it down even further.

The National Weather Service has issued an extreme cold warning for wind chill temperatures this weekend that will plummet to as low as -15 to -30 degrees Fahrenheit.

The most biting arctic air so far this winter season descends on the Northeast early Saturday morning.

A cold front marking the leading edge of the arctic air generated light snow starting Friday night. It will continue off-and-on into early Saturday.

But the snow will play second fiddle to the extremely dangerous wind chills this weekend. The extreme cold warning will likely take effect by 10 a.m. Saturday.

Expect temperatures to plummet throughout the day and the wind pick up – whipping 40-60 mph at times. That has lead to a wind advisory being issued as well.

Wind chills start cold and then get worse. They will be below 0 by the end of the day Saturday. You’ll need to cover as much exposed skin as possible to avoid frost bite, which can set in on bare skin after just 30 minutes.

There have been 17 deaths out on the streets of New York City since the cold weather began, with 13 of them attributed to hypothermia, three to overdose, and one cause of death still undetermined. Last Friday (January 30th), Mayor Mamdani said that he would not be forcing people to get off the streets, even to save their lives. After all, last Friday, there were only 13 total deaths!

Mayor Mamdani said Friday he still will only force homeless New Yorkers off the streets “as a last resort” — even as his office revealed 13 people have now died outdoors, with even colder temps coming this weekend.

The Democratic socialist continued to insist that city workers will compel homeless people to get indoors only if they pose a danger to themselves or others. He dug in his heels as the real-feel temperature was forecast to dip as low as -1 degree Saturday into Sunday.

Pressed on how city workers will determine if someone is a danger to themselves, Mamdani said numerous factors need to be taken into account before getting someone to shelter, including whether they have enough clothing on.

Even the guy that Mamdani wants to be the city’s corporate counsel said on Wednesday that homeless people definitely should NOT be forced inside during this extreme weather – after four more people had died.

Testifying before the City Council’s Rules Committee for his approval to become the city’s corporation counsel, Steve Banks was pressed by Speaker Julie Menin on how he would advise the fashionably-focused mayor during future extreme weather events.

“What I have seen is exactly what should be happening, which is adhering to the state law to evaluate people, bring them inside when the state law permits people to be brought inside, continually to engage people,” said Banks, who served as the former Department of Social Services commissioner under Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Banks, however, rejected a broad removal policy when Menin asked if the city could relocate people “in the interest of health and safety” during extreme cold, particularly those with serious mental illness.

“I think the state law doesn’t permit that kind of blanket approach. It requires an individualized evaluation, and that is exactly what I see being implemented right now,” Banks said.

“That requires nursing evaluations, that requires clinical evaluations. And that’s what I see is going on right now at, quite frankly, an extraordinarily high level.”

Well, apparently Mamdani has a solution for both individual evaluations and nursing evaluations. During a press conference on Friday where the mayor acknowledged the extreme cold headed their way, he also rolled out his plan to ask those on the street to nicely come inside, while acknowledging that yes, some people have to be forcibly removed because they are not mentally capable of making the decision to preserve their own lives.

The city is reopening 10 public schools as warming centers, deploying school nurses for street outreach and piloting a new program pairing formerly homeless New Yorkers with outreach workers to encourage people to seek shelter.

The city is also adding roughly 65 new hotel shelter units for individuals reluctant to enter congregate settings, adding two new CUNY warming centers and partnering with Northwell Health to open two new warming facilities, Mamdani said. The city will operate 62 warming centers and vehicles this weekend with new signage to make them easier to find.

Beyond the peer outreach pilot and school nurses, the city is mobilizing its crisis management system’s network of violence interrupters and partnering with the Association of Community Employment Programs for the Homeless to deploy additional staff, the mayor said. Two overdose prevention centers will remain open 24 hours this weekend in response to the overdose-related deaths.

“To those who may consider themselves more comfortable on the streets, I want to speak directly to you,” Mamdani said at the Friday afternoon briefing. “Come inside. These temperatures are too low and too dangerous to survive.”

Outreach teams have made more than 1,250 placements into shelters and safe havens since Jan. 19, twice as many as the previous night. The city involuntarily transported 27 people, according to the mayor. The criteria for removal include when someone is a danger to themselves or others — a condition met by virtue of the temperature.

Your eyes and ears do not deceive you. Mamdani is sending school nurses – ones that he says have been trained in “direct street outreach” – to go evaluate people and either convince them to get inside, or potentially involuntarily move them indoors. After all, that would qualify as a “nursing evaluation,” right? Yes, school nurses are licensed professionals, but… really? This is what school nurses want to do outside of school hours, walk around in below zero temperatures to evaluate homeless people? Are they being paid for this, or is this volunteer based?

There’s also the fact that Mamdani mentions that they have “involuntarily transported 27 people,” meaning that they managed to get 27 people out of the cold who had no rational concern for their own safety. But at least 13 people froze to death. And don’t forget those overdose prevention centers! Does anyone feel those warm collectivism fuzzies now??

And somehow, Mamdani is expecting his “violence interrupters,” school nurses, and homeless outreach staff to deal with all of this, because goodness knows that hard socialist left doesn’t want the NYPD involved. At least, until someone gets violent with the “violence interrupters” and they call for police assistance. I’m sure the school nurses, even the ones trained for “street outreach,” are not signing up for physical confrontations with the homeless. And what happens if one of these people doing the outreach gets injured, or – God forbid – killed in Mamdani’s do-gooder socialist utopia where they are trying to move the homeless inside?

I sincerely hope that no one else dies of hypothermia in these extreme temperatures, but I doubt that Mamdani’s plan of nicely asking people who live on the streets to come indoors is going to go as smoothly as he thinks. In the meantime, stay cozy with all that warm collectivism, New Yorkers.

Featured image: original Victory Girls art by Darleen Click