Great post. Like you , I looked at timestamps for periods in question and noticed much the same. Skew T's had me at 33 max and much qpf was already laid down, and column was close enough to not yet worry (but 700's to surface were scarily close). Even if I did end as drizzle/snizzle, I'd be happy to see an appreciable event.
Mind you not much dissecting will matter at 4+ days out, and we should just be looking for consistency/trends to get hammered out right now, but it sure is fun to be seeing winter on the maps though.