I was thinking just the same - we seem to have a two season climate now in East Anglia, 3 months of summer and 9 months of Auuuutuuuuummmmmmmnnnnnnnn...

Looking at an old climate atlas, it shows the Jan isotherms going roughly North-South (coldest in the east, warmest in the west) as opposed to the summer isotherms which run East-West. Traditionally in terms of temperature, 0m here was the same as 150m where my parents live in Worcestershire, or 450m on Dartmoor.

However, with the extension of the Icelandic low eastwards, and the associated death of the winter easterly and battleground snow, the Jan isotherms have shifted East-West, and the Suffolk climate has become a drier version of Devon and Cornwall (snowless and near frostless, with 0m here now equivalent to 0m in Devon). We must have experienced larger changes in temperature and snowfall here than anywhere else I guess.

As to why it has happened, I don't know for sure but I surmise that the winter easterly can be thought of as a density-driven current pushing west against the prevailing wind regime. Now there is less cold air in Siberia and what there is is less dense, there is less force behind it, and the cold air is unable to reach us. Indeed the "battleground" region the last few years seems to have been near Moscow !!

I was in Copenhagen recently and the Danes were complaining about the lack of snow and the "English weather"....

Brac