That year was a scary one. The return of the -NAO after 10 years. I remember everyone being angry and puzzled when someone, maybe Ji, was complaining that despite the good 500 pattern temps were normal at best. Several, including myself, observed that we had had a record warm ++++AO episode in November that had really hurt the source regions, so that the December blocking had no cold to work with. That was true...but the disturbing thing is that a November torch shouldn't have destroyed the rest of winter like that. But it did, or if not destroy it, it certainly limited the upside severely.