Not my fault: Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Friday that while the city could have done 'better', it was a 'perfect storm' of circumstances out of his control which led to New York being brought to its knees by the winter storm on Thursday

New York City was brought to its knees by an early Nor'Easter on Thursday, but Mayor Bill de Blasio chalked it down to just 'bad luck' and not poor planning on his part.

On Thursday, Winter Storm Avery caused chaos across the Big Apple.

Hundreds of flights out of JFK, LaGuardia and Newark were canceled, buses were entirely stopped and Port Authority turned to mayhem.

People were stuck in traffic for up to nine hours and the George Washington Bridge was shuttered.

On Friday, the snow melted and ordinary life resumed with the exception of residual airport delays and cancellations.

De Blasio said that it was not his fault the impact was so severe.

'We got just about every form of bad luck we could have gotten yesterday. The weather service reports changed radically yesterday,' he told NY 1.

Despite the snowfall starting at around 1pm, the mayor did not know how bad it would be, he said, until people were leaving work.

'When it finally became clear we were going to get fast and intense snow, rush hour was already beginning.

There was gridlock traffic on major roads in and out of the city with some people stuck in it for nine hours

Downed trees only added to the mayhem and made it more dangerous to walk about

Subway hell: There were drastic overflows across the city's subway network which caused delays and crowding

'Everything was having a multiplier effect in a bad way.

'We had here — I don’t want to overuse a phrase — we had here something of a perfect storm.

'I can’t remember that happening previously in the middle of what seemed to be a normal day,' he said.

He added that the closure of the George Washington Bridge, a key commuter bridge for residents of New Jersey, 'threw everything off'.

'That had a horrible, extreme reaction on the entire city,' he said.

De Blasio conceded: 'There are definitely some things we need to learn from this and things we need to do better' and promised a full review on what went wrong.