Authorities defend shutdown as storm skirts New York

NEW YORK – It was to dump up to 3 feet of snow onto New York City, bringing Gotham to its knees and causing hardened locals to huddle inside as drifts inched up the sooty walls of buildings.

Instead, the snowstorm veered east, pounding parts of New England and suburban Long Island on Tuesday but allowing New York to churn back to life as officials defended the extraordinary measures that had shut down public transportation.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a news briefing, “I will always err on the side of caution.”

He and Gov. Andrew Cuomo said travel bans and the shutdown of public transport kept accidents to a minimum.

Along the coast, wind and water were the big problems. Ocean waves knocked out a seawall in Marshfield, Massachusetts, flooding parts of town and damaging several homes.

One meteorologist apologized for getting the forecast wrong.

“My deepest apologies to many key decision-makers and so many members of the general public,” Gary Szatkowski, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in New Jersey, said on Twitter. “You made a lot of tough decisions expecting us to get it right, and we didn’t.”