Something has to start for it to end. A few frosts does not a winter make.
Agreed. That's something which we can easily get in this part of the world, during the spring or autumn after all. This means that we would need a lot more than that, to have had any sort of "winter" whatsoever and here in Edinburgh, we actually had far more frosts during the autumn than what we have had during this winter (there were 11 official air frosts at Edinburgh Gogarbank during the autumn of 2019 compared to just 6 during this winter so far at that same station).
In addition to that, our codest temperatures of the combined autumn/winter period haven't even happened during this actual winter, and that shows just how poor this so-called winter has been in terms of any sort of cold weather.
For the record, the coldest night at Edinburgh Gogarbank so far during that period was -5.6°C on 19 November 2019, and the coldest day during that same period was on 30 November 2019 with a maximum temperature of 3.0°C at Edinburgh Gogarbank.
The preceding winter of 2018/19 was also very poor but even during that winter, the temperatures were lower during January and February than what they have been during this year, with far more in the way of air frosts.
The north of Edinburgh, usually always missing out on snow events which occur not just within the rest of Scotland or the UK, but also within the rest of Edinburgh.