I'm actually pretty bullish on colder this Winter.. at least one of the better Winters in the last 10 years. The models made a huge shift to warm over the last few days though.. Polar Vortex in northern/NW Canada really pops the SE ridge here in the 2nd half of December. Here's a post I just made about it in the ENSO thread:
Yeah, pretty big warm up on the GFS ensembles. +NAO gets going in the next few days, and the -WPO transitions into a pattern where the PV is in northern/NW Canada. Natural Gas moved from $5.50 to $4.50 in a few days, over the last few days. It actually led models shifts by about 2 days. I just think that is so interesting. I wonder if Ray's January warm up is happening early? I do think in the longer term we have tendency for -AO/-EPO but that may not be until after or around Jan 1.. Stratosphere warming in Nov wasn't super strong, but that is a possible -NAO the last week of Dec, if the cooler pattern is going to move back in early. we'll see.
After the clippers the next few days, I don't really see any threats for snow until around Jan 1st.