In the days before Hurricane Sandy hammered the East Coast, National Weather Service forecasters in Taunton worried that it might hit Massachusetts. Some forecasting models indicated that it could make a direct hit here.

That did not happen. The storm swerved to the west and devastated areas of New York and New Jersey, while simply grazing Massachusetts. But what happened there has raised a frightening question: What if the storm had done what the computer models suggested and zeroed in on the Bay State?