Blizzard 2015

Slate has an article by Eric Holthaus about the blizzard that wasn't, sort of:

This blizzard has peaked, but will continue throughout the day on Tuesday, with the worst conditions in coastal New England. Slatest will have continuous updates until the storm tapers off Tuesday night. 

Here's the latest:

An intense band of snow is currently situated directly over the city of Boston, where snow totals are already approaching two feet in Copley Square. The National Weather Service estimates the band is producing additional snow at a rate exceeding one inch per hour, meaning this storm could still easily threaten the city’s all-time single snowstorm record of 27.5 inches set in February of 2003.
In sharp contrast, the storm was a flop in New York City. It’s essentially stopped snowing there, with totals averaging between eight and twelve inches across the city. In a midday press conference, Mayor Bill de Blasio said that “we obviously missed the worst of the storm.” Defending actions by his office and Governor Andrew Cuomo to shut schools and freeze regional transportation, de Blasio added: “Prepare for the worst. Hope for the best.”
With the primary snowfall band well east of the city, over Long Island, the National Weather Service now expects just two to four additional inches of snow during the day on Tuesday in New York City, producing storm totals of around ten to fourteen inches, well below yesterday’s forecast of twenty to thirty inches. In contrast, the Weather Channel was forecasting twelve to eighteen inches for New York City most of the day on Monday, a prediction that looks prescient in hindsight.
The reason for New York City’s low totals? The National Weather Service strongly weighted its forecast toward the historically more accurate ECMWF model and the high-resolution NAM model, which showed the Long Island snow band stalling out directly over the city instead. That didn’t happen. In constructing its forecast, the New York City office of the NWS all but ignored its own recently upgraded GFS model, which showed significantly less snow in the city. As late as Monday evening, the NWS emphasized that the storm could over-perform in NYC, saying “it should be a raging blizzard.” Late Monday night, a Philadelphia-area National Weather Service meteorologist publicly apologized via Twitter for the poor forecast, saying “You made a lot of tough decisions expecting us to get it right, and we didn't. Once again, I'm sorry.”
New York Governor Cuomo, perhaps conditioned by the state’s slow response to the recent Buffalo snowstorm, ordered a shutdown of virtually all modes of transportation in the New York City area on the basis of the National Weather Service forecast, including the city’s subway system, which had never previously closed for a snowstorm. As Slate’s Ben Mathis-Lilly notes, many subway trains ran devoid of passengers throughout the night, despite the shutdown.
Winds briefly exceeded hurricane force this morning on Nantucket, Massachusetts, with thundersnow reported on Cape Cod. The National Weather Service in Boston continued to refer to the storm as “crippling” and “historic” in a morning forecast update. Winds throughout the entire region— gusting at times to fifty mph— will produce whiteout conditions for much of the day on Tuesday. Travel will continue to be impossible in the hardest-hit areas.
The National Weather Service in Boston has warned that this storm may be strong enough to permanently alter the Massachusetts coastline. “One or more new inlets” may be formed on barrier beaches, boosted by around three feet of storm surge and twenty-foot waves. Nantucket police reported “significant flooding” during the morning high tide cycle, and similar flooding is expected on mainland Massachusetts during this afternoon’s high tide as well.
There’s a link to climate change here, too. Ocean water temperatures off the East Coast are much above normal right now, as they have been nearly all year. That’s helping to boost the amount of moisture the storm is able to convert into snow via enhanced evaporation. But there’s an even easier link to climate change: sea levels in the Northeast have risen by about a foot over the last hundred years or so, about half of which is directly attributable to warming seas and melting glaciers worldwide. There’s a hundred percent certainty, in my view, that sea level rise is making the impact of extreme coastal storms like this one worse.

Rico says that New England got clobbered, but Philly didn't...