A massive winter storm called a “bomb cyclone” is set to batter the Northeast this week — leaving the city blanketed in snow and battling harsh winds and temps as low as 4 degrees, meteorologists say.

“The problem is the timing,” said AccuWeather meteorologist Dave Dombek on Tuesday. “It will definitely impact the Thursday morning commute.”

Manhattan is set to get 3 inches of snow starting around 5 or 6 a.m. Thursday, but parts of Queens, Brooklyn and Long Island should brace for at least double that, experts warned.

And while the city is expected to “warm up’’ to 28 degrees Thursday, a blast of Arctic air will cause temps to plummet again by Friday, to only a high of 17 degrees.

On Saturday, the mercury will drop to just 4 or 5 degrees.

“There is a deep freeze coming up Saturday into Sunday,’’ Dombek said.

The coldest day on record for January 6 was set in 1896, when temperatures fell to minus 2 degrees, he said.

“I don’t expect we will break that, but we’ll be coming close,” the meteorologist said.

The extreme blast of harsh winter weather targeting the Northeast is called a “bomb cyclone’’ because its pressure is expected to drop so drastically that it’s like a storm explosion, experts said.

“All day Thursday meteorologists are going to be glued to the new GOES-East satellite watching a truly amazing extratopical ‘bomb’ cyclone off New England coast,” tweeted meteorologist Ryan Maue of Weather.us.

“It will be massive — fill up entire Western Atlantic off U.S. East Coast. Pressure as low as Sandy & hurricane winds,” he wrote.

Maue said it was possible that “extremely dangerous cold from brutal wind chills will wreck the Midwest and Northeast during day Friday into Saturday.

“Record lows likely at most locations,” he added.