(Bloomberg) -- Reopen Broadway, start up the trains, get thecommuters back on the road. The great New York City blizzard of ’15was a bust.

Not that there was no snow -- Manhattan’s Central Park had 7.9inches (20 centimeters) as of 7 a.m. -- but the dire forecasts ofas much as 36 inches never came to pass.

It was a fine line between hit or miss, meteorologists said. Thestorm’s path was 50 to 75 miles off the predicted track and thatwas all it took. Just 85 miles east of Central Park, over inMattituck on the north fork of Long Island, 24 inches fell, saidDavid Stark, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Upton, NewYork.

“That just makes a huge difference, that small distance,especially when you are dealing with a storm like this,” Stark saidby telephone. “It definitely was a challenge for us.”

Since Sunday, the weather service had predicted anywhere from 18inches to 3 feet of snow for New York, holding out the possibilitythat a “historic blizzard” was about to strike the largest city inthe U.S.

So what went wrong?

Weather Service forecasters conferred with the WeatherPrediction Center in Maryland in several conference calls as thestorm approached. Stark said the forecasts that came out of thosecalls were based partially on the models that were showing thestorm taking a closer track to the coastline, as well as on humanconsensus.

Difficult Predictions

When it comes to a large winter storm moving up the Atlanticcoast, predicting how much snow will fall on its western edge canbe particularly difficult because that is where precipitationamounts can fall off rapidly, said Louis Uccellini, director of theweather service. Snowfall amounts can change a lot over shortdistances, he said.

“What we learned from this storm is that we all need to improveon how we communicate forecast uncertainty,” Uccellini said in aconference call with reporters.

He said the weather service would be reviewing many of itsprocedures.

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts model wasvery bullish on the storm, while the U.S. Global Forecast Systemmodel had the storm forming farther to the east and didn’t have asmuch enthusiasm when it came to snow totals, said Rob Carolan, ameteorologist with Hometown Forecast Services Inc. in Nashua, NewHampshire.

Weather Models

“Everyone went with the Euro and it was wrong,” Carolan said.“This winter the Euro hasn’t been the model it has been in the lasttwo winters.”

While the GFS, which was upgraded earlier this month, did abetter job forecasting how the storm played out, another U.S. modelalso erred on large snowfall amounts, Uccellini said.

“Our own NAM model was right there with the European Centre,” hesaid.

Blizzard forecasts prompted New York City and state officials toshut roads and commuter transit systems and trans-Hudson crossings,including the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, and the GeorgeWashington Bridge. Amtrak cut back on service along its Northeastcorridor.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo issued a travel ban on downstateroads; New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Connecticut GovernorDannel Malloy did so as well. At least 7,517 flights were canceledon Monday and Tuesday in the U.S., according to FlightAware, aHouston-based airline tracking service.

Uccellini said elected officials made the right call and theiractions may have saved lives. The storm did have a major impact onNew England, particularly along the Massachusetts coast, wherethere was flooding along with the snow, he said.

’Knife Edge’

“New York was on the knife edge of the dry side,” said RichardBann, a meteorologist with the U.S. Weather Prediction Center inCollege Park, Maryland. “Obviously, if you go a short distance eastin Connecticut, they will tell you a different story.”

In the end, the storm was too far out in the Atlantic todeliver the blizzard and bands of heavy snow across New York City.Overnight, forecasters knew the storm wasn’t going to be as severein New York as first predicted and the revisions started.

Across New England, snow fell by the foot. As of 3 p.m., Bostonreported 26 inches downtown and 20.8 inches at Logan InternationalAirport. Wind gusts reaching 75 miles per hour were reported acrossCape Cod.

“I think what happens is the philosophy behind weatherforecasting is that everyone in this business is in it because theywant to experience the big storms,” Carolan said. “They start towishcast, they lose sight of what is going on in theatmosphere.”

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