It’s not just the ball that’s dropping.
Organizers are predicting that fewer people will be on hand to ring in the New Year in Times Square because of looming rain.
“If it’s raining, I’m sure it’ll be fewer people out, especially earlier in the evening,” Tim Tompkins, president of the Times Square Alliance, said Sunday.
Several hundred thousand people are usually estimated to attend the ball drop — a tradition since 1907.
Tompkins said that last year’s “crowds were thinner than usual” because of the frigid temperatures. But now that the cold’s been replaced with rain, he said, “Be careful what you wish for.”
Based on forecasts, this year’s bash will be relatively warm, but wet — and Times Square revelers had better pack their ponchos because umbrellas, along with backpacks and booze, are banned by the NYPD.
It’s supposed to rain steadily starting around 3 p.m. Monday all the way into 2019, until about 3 a.m., and up to an inch of rain will fall, said AccuWeather meteorologist Carl Erickson.
“Once they’re in there for an hour or two, I guess they’ll get used to it,” Erickson said of the crowds, who should experience a rare New Year’s Eve treat: temps in the mid-40s.
Jeffrey Straus, president of Countdown Entertainment, which co-manages the ball drop with the Alliance, said “weather always affects turnout, but no matter what, there are hundreds of thousands of people.”
Retiree Mila Ménendez came out to catch a practice drop Sunday rather than face the expected New Year’s Eve deluge.
“The rain is uncomfortable [at] my age,” she said, declining to provide a number.
The retired UN accountant was among the revelers who endured 8-degree temperatures last year — the coldest New Year’s Eve at the Crossroads of the World since 1962, when it was 4 degrees. She’s seen the ball descend six times in her 55 years of living in the Big Apple.
“I came here the first year when my father brought me [to the US from the Dominican Republic in 1963],” she said. “It was easier then — they didn’t put you in pens — but it was scary with the huge crowd.”
The area was crowded Sunday, and by 5 p.m., the NYPD had to send in extra officers for crowd control.
Hundreds of millions of people will catch the end-of-year celebration from their homes and watch as the glittery orb is lowered and artists like Christina Aguilera and Post Malone perform.