Most people remember things they "do" much better than things they maybe read about. I've been doing weather emails for coworkers and friends/family since the late 90s, right around the time the original Rutgersfan.com message boards were created, so yeah, I remember it all pretty well. Obviously people talked about gameday weather back then, usually in the game prediction threads, but there's zero doubt in my mind that I was the first one who started doing gameday weather threads, which led to also doing winter weather threads.
But I'll never be able to prove it, so it's an academic argument, which is part of the reason I've always been so annoyed when message boards don't have or lose stored threads (and which is also why I'm glad I at least have all my winter storm emails from back then). Same with COVID, since now I can't "prove" that you're off-base on that too. Back in late January, I didn't think COVID would be as bad as the flu, but I always said it might be very bad (I hate absolutism, which you ought to know) and I mostly just mocked babybull, who posted about 9 nutty conspiracies about the virus that needed mocking, although he did get the very fast spread around the world right (I think that was just by chance though since he always believes in the craziest outcome). The new thread was mostly started to try to keep at least one thread on useful info/data (most were not) and it worked for awhile.
And on this storm, I made a comment about a low probability/high impact outcome on Monday, because people often like to know such things. But it wasn't until Thursday that the models really started showing the storm blowing up and dropping 2-4" or more on this area, which is when I would've started a thread. I had zero issue with Tango starting it, though, especially since I've been pretty preoccupied with COVID. My only issue really was the snark I got on Monday, so I gave him some snark back when that low probability event he absolutely dismissed, largely came to fruition. I think you're reading way too much into the rest.