It was a really tough forecast as closer to the city it was rain until late in the day. We kept going back and forth but I don't think they expected 8-12" to pile up in about 6 hours. Kinda similar to the November storm we just had
I got stuck in that one, took 5 hours to drive 15 miles (parsippany to Montclair). It was a rain snow mix and then just turned to heavy wet snow and started piling up around 3pm
And that was before gps and I didn't even have a cell phone yet
I seem to recall a similar situation in MLK day in 2000. Very strong arctic blast only temps were supposed to be in the low 20s and we struggled to get above 10 most of the day