The weather is expected to turn cold later this week and there are signs that the next few weeks may be generally colder than average. The reaction to this from many people has been something along the lines of, "But I thought we were having a mild winter!" Well, we were. However, it appears that is changing, and change is hardly unusual when it comes to weather. This is one of the confusing things about long range, seasonal forecasts.
Weather is naturally variable, so most summers have some cold stretches and some mild stretches. In the end, a cold winter is when there are more cold stretches than mild stretches and a mild winter is when there are more mild stretches than cold stretches. To have assumed that the mild start to winter would be an indicator of the whole winter was probably just wishful thinking.
