Understood but...
The most consistent winter feature in our ---PDO period has been the Xmas torch. The second half of December has been a horror show other than a few notable dry cold periods (including 2017) Of the two "flavors" failure that have dominated recently (SER and Pac Puke), the problem in late December seems to be more Pac Puke. Like clockwork I know somewhere between Dec 5 - 10 a big AK vortex is going to show up on the extended and march toward verification..
Second, a good Nov/early December might not help us, but a bad Nov/early December can surely hurt us. I believe it was 2020-2021 where we had the first extended period of -NAO in a decade and we were all excited, but the preceding November was a +++++++AO cluster and all of NA had no cold air, so the -NAO just blocked in mild a