The way I recall the model drama for Jan. 05 storm... models 5+ days out had a major snowstorm for the northeast (the euro stands out here). There was the beastly vort max expected to drop down from Canada, but I also believe the long range models had it phasing with a southern vort max which was referred to as the "Baja low" in the southern stream. The models then began to ditch the idea of these two systems phasing as the Baja low closed off and decided it would hang out over, well, the Baja...The storm threat completely fell apart as I recall from the day~2-5 range as the northern vort was no longer digging south enough and it basically trended to a crap clipper on the models...Then in the short range everything started to come back, and we had just another instance where each model run got better and better as we got closer, to the point where 24 hours out we were staring at a HECS.
Loved that storm down here in coastal Jersey where we had 16 inches. Most of the damage (10 inches) came with the warm air advection punch on that Saturday, It got briefly dicey that evening as the back edge of that precip neared with the 850 low, the temp spiked to 32 and a change over was 5 miles from my house. Then in the nick of time temps began to crash again and we caught the beginning stages of the CCB late that night and Sunday morning. Dropped a windswept, cold fluffy 6 inches to top things off.