All this crying, particularly from areas that do not average much snow in Dec, is comical. I am not nearly as educated as many of the posters on here and will not comment on LR, but will say all it is going to take is one or two decent storm for Southern areas be reach normal or even above normal snowfall to date this early in the season. It is the Northern areas that have more catching up to do.
Yes the warmth has sucked and yes it has put a damper on the winter feel, but in terms of snowfall (at least IMBY) it has not been a terrible December. We average a bit over 12" in Dec and we are just shy of 12" to date. The lack of retention does suck, but I am far from ready to call this a ratter. We still have plenty of time to turn this around.