"ronaldbutton" wrote:

I see from todays papers that the Met Office had secretly forecast the
severe weather for December...

Don't believe everything (/anything?) you read in the papers... :-)

Here's what the Met Office says:

"The first time a cold spell was mentioned on our website was in our 30-day
forecast issued at the end of October - it provided early indications of the
onset of a cold spell from late November."

So it evidently wasn't a secret.