Paul Bartlett wrote:
Following a lot of hard work put into the European Winter by H H Lamb et
alia in the 20th century. The late November cold snap is normal. So is
the mid-December mildening. Then they move on to the late December cold
spell. After that the cold spells are shown to be dominant in Mid
January and Mid February.
Otherwise southwesterlies dominate. This leads me to suspect that the
coming winter will be normal or above, as I have published.
OK seasonal forecasting aided by numerical products has improved. But
you cant just wipe away a lot of serious hard work put in past century.
I've lost me duck!
Cheers
Paul

Most of the forecasts I've read do seem to be suggesting something
approaching the classic "normal" pre 1990s scenario. Something that
today's tabloids would class as "severe". Shall we start a running
tally of how many times we'll see the classic headline and sub deck
"Big Freeze Chaos...And there's more snow on the way..."