NEW YORK — After a historic bomb cyclone blizzard brought New York City to a near standstill Monday, it will take time for the city to dig out and get back into gear.

The storm had dropped 19.7 inches of snow in Central Park by Monday afternoon amid a ban on nonemergency travel on all city streets for much of the day.

Though the mayor’s driving ban lifted at noon Monday, the snowfall will clog the city’s functioning for days to come.

“I am imploring people to stay off the roads,” the mayor said after the ban lifted. “The fewer passenger and commercial vehicles need to be assisted, the quicker we can respond to plows and emergency vehicles. And if you can cook at home, please do so instead of ordering food to be delivered given the conditions.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani urged New Yorkers to stay indoors on Monday and check on their neighbors.

“Turn on that crackling fireplace YouTube video, call that relative whose WhatsApp you haven’t responded to, make an enormous pot of soup and bring some to your neighbors upstairs,” Mamdani said at a weather briefing Monday afernoon.

The mayor said that trash pickup will be paused on Monday and Tuesday, and officials said New Yorkers also can expect reduced subway service as they resume their commutes.

“We will provide an updated plan on trash collection by end of day tomorrow, on what collection will look like for the rest of the week,” the mayor said, adding that city dwellers should hold on to their recycling as the city will first prioritize getting trash and compost off the streets.

Some service on the shuttered Long Island Railroad will be restored, MTA CEO Janno Lieber said at the same briefing, though “exactly how much is still a work in progress.”

There were no immediate reports of any storm-related deaths. But some 200,000 customers lost power in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, according to poweroutage.us.

Most of the outages in the city were in Queens, where over 10,000 customers were without power. Staten Island had 1,771 outages, followed by 303 in Brooklyn. As of Monday afternoon, around 8,000 customers' power had been restored, the mayor said.

The recovery from the storm will be aided by rising temperatures expected to reach the 40s later in the week.

Students will return to the classrooms starting Tuesday, the mayor announced. “You can still pelt me with snowballs when you see me,” Mamdani quipped.

Many public school students were thrilled by Monday’s full snow day, the first with no remote learning since before the COVID pandemic.

Mamdani reiterated in a 1010 WINS hit Monday morning that the city decided to have a “good old-fashioned” snow day because kids and teachers “were coming back from a week of being off, and so that meant that they didn’t all have the technology in advance of what would otherwise have been a remote learning day.”

The mayor declared a state of emergency Sunday evening and issued travel ban on all vehicles except first responders, sanitation plows and other emergency vehicles.

Around 2,600 Sanitation Department employees were working 12-hour shifts, Mamdani said Monday, with 2,300 plows, 700 salt spreaders and 1,400 emergency snow shovelers getting paid $30 an hour working to clear the streets and sidewalks.

The shovelers cleared 1,600 crosswalks, 419 fire hydrants and almost 900 bus stops overnight, in addition to the city Transportation Department’s clearance of around 1,300 sheltered bus stops, according to the mayor.

The Department of Homeless Services made 79 shelter placements as outreach workers toiled to get the homeless off the streets overnight into Monday.

The snowfall was the heaviest in nearly ten years, though it didn’t touch the city’s record of 27.5 inches set in 2016. The precipitation was in line with 1996, when 20.2 inches fell.

“What we’ve done is utilize every single tool that we found to be effective last time around, and then enhanced it,” Mamdani said, nodding to the snowstorm that pummeled the city in late January.

Power problems in the Rockaways in Queens shut down the Rockaway Shuttle overnight. Service was restored Monday afternoon, though the Staten Island Railway remained suspended in both directions due to the weather.

New Yorkers had mixed feelings about the snow — especially as it came on the heels of January’s winter storm and cold spell.

Lawrence Robinson, 42, declared this season the “worst winter ever.”

“The snow was starting to melt and then it came right back,” the Canarsie resident complained as he took a break from shoveling. “I do Uber and my car is currently plowed in. Its like a double edge because the prices surge because of the snow but then it is a pain trying to park.”

Lisa Lamothe, a 30-something-year-old who works in theater, got out to enjoy the snow in the park.

“I’m grateful I don’t have to be outside for any reason but it’s fun to choose to come out and play in the snow for a minute,” Lamothe said, adding that she planned to take pictures and hopefully build a snowman.

New Yorkers, including Daniel Ortiz, 38, also took refuge from the elements at the 22 warming centers across the city. Ortiz said on Sunday night that he had an “issue” at a shelter and had to visit the hospital, where a doctor gave him a list of warming centers.

“This good place to resolve the problem now, because I don’t have any place to stay,” Ortiz said from the center at Midwood High School in Brooklyn. “I have access to the bathrooms and a place to rest while I resolve the situation I have at the shelter where I’m staying.”

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(With Roni Jacobson.)

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