Well I started following weather after Floyd hit and especially when the Millennium storm came. I was still pretty young though but I def remember, when I used to watch the weather channel lol, them showing 2-3' of snow. I remember the schools were closed the day of the storm and I remember waking up to about an inch or two of snow with the rest being slop. A big bust like that can really destroy a meteorologist's credibility especially after the big hype for days leading up to it.
I think meteorologists became much more conservative after 2001, I mean they were really conservative with the Dec 26, 2010 storm when the majority of models were giving us well over a foot of snow and they showed maybe 6-10/12" less than a day before it hit. That storm was kind of a bust in the other direction though.