Mr. de Blasio, then the city's public advocate, knew whom to blame: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. City residents and officials were all but bombarding him with rotten tomatoes as they complained of stranded ambulances and barricaded streets that paralyzed parts of the city for days. "I don't think New Yorkers got a clear enough message," Mr. de Blasio said at the time, criticizing the mayor for not declaring a snow emergency ahead of the storm.

Now, as Mr. de Blasio succeeds Mr. Bloomberg in office, he is acutely aware of the political threat of six to eight inches of snow forecast for Thursday night, the first test of his promises that the city would continue to function with brisk efficiency under his watch.

"Something like a snowstorm, I take very personally. I can see it, I can feel it, I can touch it, it's not an abstraction," he said on Tuesday, hours before he was to be sworn in as mayor. "We are 100 percent ready."

Snow has been dealing gut punches to mayors since the city was incorporated in 1898. In fact, soon after Robert A. Van Wyck, the modern city's first mayor, took office, The New York Times reported that after a November blizzard, "the Street Cleaning Department claimed to have had many men and carts at work," but they "made hardly any impression on the streets."

Mr. de Blasio is hoping to avoid a reprise of the 2010 debacle, during which complaints grew so loud that a top aide to Mr. Bloomberg had to apologize before a City Council hearing. On Tuesday, Mr. de Blasio said the current commissioners of the Sanitation and Fire Departments and the Office of Emergency Management had agreed to stay in their jobs during the mayoral transition.

Many top members of the new administration, if not the topmost officials themselves, are experienced in city operations and are well aware of how snowstorms have torpedoed past mayors, said George Arzt, a Democratic political consultant who still remembers the February 1969 blizzard that almost brought down Mayor John V. Lindsay's government.

"He has all these experienced hands around who know exactly what to do, and know exactly what snow means in political terms to the mayor," Mr. Arzt said. "It means: Do a good job, or you're in deep trouble. Especially for your first test."

The 15 inches of snow that fell in the 1969 storm killed 42 people and crippled the city for three days, with residents of Queens all but imprisoned in their homes. ("Get away, you bum," an angry woman in Fresh Meadows told Mr. Lindsay when he tried to tour the borough, foreshadowing later hostile comments, ranging from impolite to unprintable, that Queens residents would make about Mr. Bloomberg in 2010.)

At least Mr. Lindsay kept his job, even winning re-election. Ten years later, Michael A. Bilandic, then the mayor of Chicago, bungled his handling of a blizzard so badly that his re-election bid failed two months later. A Denver snowstorm dealt William H. McNichols Jr., the city's longtime mayor, a politically fatal blow on Christmas Eve 1982: The city's 45 plows were no match for the snow, and Mr. McNichols lost re-election the following spring.

But perhaps no mayor became more experienced riding out snow-inflicted bad news than Edward I. Koch, who dealt with several snowstorms in his first year as mayor in 1978, recalled Mr. Arzt, who served as his spokesman for years. After one storm, Mr. Arzt said, Mr. Koch performed the verbal equivalent of throwing up his hands in disgust, exclaiming: "What's next — locusts?"

The storm predicted for Thursday, while not expected to come close to the 2010 blizzard, which unloaded 20 inches of snow on Central Park, will likely top the five-inch snowfall of two weeks ago, said David Stark, a National Weather Service meteorologist. Flakes will begin falling in earnest on Thursday evening, lasting into early Friday morning.

Mr. de Blasio was not the Bloomberg administration's most vocal critic during the snowstorm debacle of 2010; that honor belonged to several members of the City Council from Brooklyn and Queens, who raged at Mr. Bloomberg for prioritizing Manhattan's cleanup over snow removal in the other boroughs. (Councilman Charles Barron of Brooklyn memorably charged that the city had "cleaned the bike lanes in Manhattan before they got to Brooklyn.")

Given that Mr. de Blasio campaigned partly as a champion of the boroughs beyond Manhattan, it seems clear the same people will be watching Mr. de Blasio's performance for signs of Manhattan favoritism.

"Let's just see if he takes care of Brooklyn, where he came from, or does he prioritize Gracie Mansion, where he's moving to," Mr. Barron said on Tuesday.

In other preparations, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority was salting subway platforms, fueling snow and ice-breaking equipment and readying an array of de-icing machinery. The Education Department, which will be under the leadership of a new chancellor, has not yet determined whether to close the schools. "We'll make a decision when we need to," said Devon Puglia, a spokesman.

As for the popular Citi Bike program, bike share officials plan to dig out the bike docks promptly, a Transportation Department spokesman said. If the snow is too heavy, they may close the system.

The Sanitation Department is sending 5,000 workers out on Thursday to salt roads and plow streets. Up to 1,600 plows are available, said Keith Mellis, a department spokesman.

But with the snow estimates to be relatively mild, some suggested Mr. de Blasio may be getting off easy.

"We won't be able to judge him on this go-round," Mr. Barron said, "but inevitably, he's going to have to face it."