No doubt that we're far, far, far better off with where we are now than with staring down a pig Pacific jet barreling into the West Coast all the way from Japan at 350mph. That shit is the suck.
I'm coming into this winter with absolutely zero expectations and an acceptance that something (and I'm not necessarily hinting at CC) that we don't have a full handle of is/are THE driving force(s) behind so many people being wrong about seasonal forecasting in the last few years. We really can't do much worse than we have recently and I'm a big believer in the rubber band theory, so I don't think that persistence is the way to look at this coming winter.
I suppose this is just a roundabout way of saying that any seasonal forecast I might have is based on "feels," which I realize wouldn't satisfy many around here.