Unpopular personal opinion: It seems that we are dealing with anomalously warm ocean waters into late December more and more. I am not sure this is a normal cyclic thing or part of climate change (I happen to believe the latter), but if this persists we are going to have to learn to accept more mixing events and savor the rare cold powder storms. It seems that our winter climo is really changing for the worse in these parts for snow lovers over the past 20 years.