I think some of the really crappy winters scare people for example 01-02 I remember still having roses blooming in early Dec-that was definitely an indicator of what was to come....
Warmth tends to overperform these days...granted the ground is saturated so that might dent it a bit...but how many times have we seen posts here "surprised" we outdid guidance by 3-5 degress?
The blizzard was forecast to be a miss here until the 12z runs came out the day before...little did we know the Euro had the correct solution for days but it was not widely used at the time