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Meteorologists: Sorry about getting that blizzard thing wrong

Weather forecasters issued a flurry of apologies for their spectacularly off-the-mark predictions of 20 to 30 inches of snow, which left the city in a virtual shutdown despite the blizzard barely glancing the Big Apple.

National Weather Service meteorologist Gary Szatkowski tweeted a series of mea culpas Tuesday about his “big forecast miss.”

“My deepest apologies to many key decision makers and so many members of the general public,” he wrote. “You made a lot of tough decisions expecting us to get it right, and we didn’t. Once again, I’m sorry.”

Local forecasters, including those in New York, rely heavily on the ­National Weather Service when ­preparing their own predictions.

Philadelphia meteorologist Kate Bilo, of CBS-3 and The CW Philadelphia, labeled herself a “dunce” while admitting her forecasting fail on Twitter.

“Lots more snow chances ahead as the cold gets locked in. We’ll get the next one,” she vowed.

Most New Yorkers woke up to a mere smattering of snow Tuesday morning, despite dire warnings that the nor’easter dubbed Winter Storm Juno would dump between two and three feet of frozen flakes here.

The anemic totals recorded by the National Weather Service by Tuesday morning included 7.8 inches in Central Park, 7 inches in Park Slope and 6 inches in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, and 4 to 7 inches on Staten Island.

Gov. Cuomo blamed the off-target numbers for the “very expensive” decision to shut down the city’s subways and roads at 11 p.m. Monday, when barely any snow was falling.

“The predictions that we acted on, obviously in this region, there was less snow than anticipated,” Cuomo said.

Mayor de Blasio, who fueled anxieties about a frozen apocalypse from the blizzard, admitted that the storm was “nothing like we feared it would be.”

“This is a better-safe-than-sorry scenario,” he told CNN. “We’ve dodged the bullet.”

De Blasio even made fun of his unfounded alarms with a dramatic reading at City Hall of a satirical report by The Onion poking fun at his ominous cautions Sunday about an “epic” and “historic” snowstorm.

“This shall be a tempest the likes of which has never been glimpsed by man or beast. Clutch your babes close to your breast and take small comfort in knowing that they will howl for but a few hours before death ­becalms them forever,” The ­Onion had Hizzoner saying.

New York’s roadways were ­reopened at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, with subways and buses put back in ­action on a weekend schedule about an hour later.

All mass transit was expected to be at full speed Wednesday.

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New York City subways were closed to the public starting at 11 p.m. on January 26.
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An expert in urban economics said the financial impact of the closures would easily exceed $750 million over three days.

St. John’s University Professor Aleksandr Gevorkyan estimated that daily commerce, usually around $3 billion, would be off 20 percent Monday to Wednesday.

All service industries combined will lose at least $482 million in revenues, with hotels and restaurants accounting for about $68 million, he said.

One restaurant-chain owner said his receipts were down about 50 percent Monday, and he expected that Tuesday’s numbers wouldn’t be much better.

“Closing everything down, maybe it was good for everybody not getting stranded, but for business it was horrific,” said Michael Schatzberg, whose Branded Restaurants chain runs the Duke’s, Big Daddy’s and City Crab eateries.

Meanwhile, the city’s Department of Consumer Affairs received more than 10 complaints of price gouging, sources said.

The agency is investigating ­after customers said they were overcharged by parking garages and gas stations.

The storm was blamed for two deaths on Long Island, which fared much worse than the city, with more than two feet of snow measured in Islip.

Sean Urda, 17, was killed when he slammed into a light pole while riding an inflatable tube down a hill in Huntington at about 10 p.m. Monday, cops said.

An 83-year-old man with dementia was found dead in a pile of snow in the back yard of his Bay Shore home at about 7:30 a.m. Tuesday.

And New England got pounded by nearly three feet of snow in some areas around Boston and coastal flooding that breached a seawall in Marshfield, Mass.

Additional reporting by Bob Fredericks, Yoav Gonen, Rebecca Harshbarger, Kevin Fasick and Daniel Prendergast