Distilling down our issues this winter seem two fold to me. First, the northern stream has been extremely uncooperative. Either it’s suppressive, or it has phased with the southern stream in a poor position, or (as possibly in the case for next weekend) it fosters ridging ahead of a southern stream low. Now this is not that strange in a Nina, but usually something works out despite that base hostility. Second, the obvious thing is just the utter and shocking lack of cold air. 6z GEFS, as an example, has like 2 days below normal through D15 (this weekend, and we’re talking like 3-5F BN). Remember when this was starting a BN period? There’s just no cold air around. It’s pretty scary and disconcerting how incessantly warm it’s been.