NEW YORK — The New York weather forecast for the weekend: cold, colder, coldest.

Officials warned Friday of single-digit temperatures and wind gusts of up to 45 mph from an arctic front blowing through the city and its suburbs after an unseasonably mild January, with the wind chill making the outdoors feel more like 5 to 10 degrees below zero in the coldest snap of 2023.

“A dangerously cold air mass is expected to settle over the region,” warned a National Weather Service bulletin advising the change would be dramatic. By midafternoon, the temperature was already heading into the teens compared to a Thursday afternoon high of 39 degrees.

Brooklyn dog walker Sam Riebesehl, 38, had two customers cancel their appointments as he waited in vain for the temperature to go up.

“It’s getting cold throughout the day,” he said. “You usually expect the sun to come up and it to get warmer. But by the afternoon, it’s going to be colder than it was in the morning.”

Senegalese immigrant Mamadou Fall found few customers for the berets and mittens up for sale on his Manhattan folding table, with most folks on the street already dressed for the cold.

“It is not like this in Africa,” he said as winds whipped debris down the streets. “It’s windy, windy, windy and cold, cold cold. Nobody is stopping by to buy anything.”

And things were only supposed to get worse.

Temperatures overnight were anticipated to plunge, with a low of 9 degrees in Manhattan, 4 degrees in White Plains and zero degrees in New Haven, Conn.

A “Code Blue” weather emergency notice was in place across the five boroughs, with lodging available for the homeless and outreach teams connecting with those in need to offer refuge in shelters, drop-in centers and Safe Havens housing programs.

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