Yes. I learned this ironically at the ESRI conference in San Diego where a rep. from the ECMWF showed a data density map of observations and how there really isn't any ship or buoy data in the Atlantic. They were able to pull a lot of commercial aircraft data down because that's the only heads up they get about the mid latitude cyclones pushing into Europe.
IMO, big takeway from this winter is the Euro is not what it used to be. Not sure if there was an update that improved forecasting in another domain at the sacrifice of North America, but man it's been hot garbage this winter.