Another snow storm barrels down on NYC and Boston

A NOAA weather visualization is seen in an image taken January 10, 2011 by the GOES-East satellite.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A winter storm bearing down on the Northeast could dump another 6 to 12 inches of snow on New York City by Wednesday, 10 days after a powerful blizzard paralyzed the city and tarnished the image of Mayor Michael Bloomberg over the city's response.

The brunt of storm was expected to hit on Tuesday night and continue into Wednesday morning, likely disrupting travel, the U.S. National Weather Service said.

Boston could get hit with 12 to 15 inches (30 cm to 38) of snow, the weather service said.

The same storm that battered the southern United States on Monday was moving north up the coast and was due to mix with an upper level disturbance in the northern Great Plains that was heading eastward, producing heavy snow and winds with low visibility.

"It's a complex system," weather service meteorologist Rick Watling said. "Those two are going to interact with each other. The coastal system is going to deepen. This thing is going to develop and it's going to have northeast winds."

The previous storm -- the sixth largest in city history -- dumped 20 inches on New York's Central Park over 17 hours on December 26 and 27, canceling thousands of flights and bringing the city to a halt with cars buried under snow for days.

The storm also slammed Boston, Philadelphia and other cities in the northeast. Financial markets went largely unaffected.

The storm was a political disaster for Bloomberg, who at first insisted the city was clearing streets with its normal efficiency when people in the boroughs outside Manhattan noticed ambulances and city buses stuck in the streets.

Entire neighborhoods were cut off as snow plows attached to the front of the city's garbage trucks struggled to keep up with the volume of snow.

The City Council held hearings on the snow response on Monday, grilling city officials about what happened, and Bloomberg issued a 15-point action plan aimed at correcting the mistakes.

The mayor resolved to improve the process for declaring an emergency, equip every snow-clearing truck with a GPS device and two-way communication, improve accountability and more rapidly hire private contractors to help clear streets.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; editing by Cynthia Osterman)