I think you were pretty realistic for the most part. Even with that 2-5", that came with the assumption that a good bit of that zone would get .8"-1" of QPF, which was what basically every model had as it's output. Even if it's all sleet, that narrowly hits the bottom part of the forecast. I had an old page from the storm thread still open from Tuesday, and checking back in it, you were pretty clear about the potential warm nose issues.
Regardless, yeah now we know why the forecast played out the way we did. One of the things that might've calmed people's nerves was the airmass we had going into the event, but of course that's only considering surface temps. I think most expected our fail scenario to be either warmer 850s, or less precip, but the two coinciding was not a recipe for a fun time.