For here in Edinburgh, it is really the lack of official air frosts during this winter which I have my biggest complaints about.
As for snowfall, we can't really complain too much here. It took a while for us to get any snow here as the winds during the early part of December in particular were coming from the north or north-west a lot of the time, leaving us completely dry here whilst other parts of the country including the likes of Manchester and even Aberdeen (which even led Richard from that part of the world to send a few photos of that onto another thread, and it takes an awful lot for him to be happy about the weather in his area) got some snow showers.
Then, that slider low on around 10 December 2017 went too far south to affect us in any way while quite a few places down south got quite a bit of snow from that. It was only really from around Christmas onwards (the actual turning point came on Christmas Day itself as we had been getting a lot of rain during that day leading us into what to date,is still our wettest day of the entire winter before that turned to snow just in time on Christmas night, to give Edinburgh its first official white Christmas since 2010 whilst I was stuck down in Hawick where the transition from rain to snow happened just too late for that) that things then improved from that perspective.
Since then, we have had a couple of other snow events which has resulted from Atlantic weather systems moving in against cold air over the UK, including one where the snow later turned to rain as a result of milder air moving in. In addition to that, the wind in those showery air streams behind those weather systems became more of a straight westerly which resulted in the likes of Aberdeen becoming much drier whilst we got more showers here in Edinburgh as a result of those showers being fed all the through the Forth-Clyde valley with it being cold enough on a few occasions for those showers to be falling as snow even here in the north of Edinburgh.
So, this hasn't been a classic snowy winter and there has only really been the one occasion where any lying snow here has been around for any length of time. However, I would probably say that we have had more snow here during this winter than what we have had during any other winter since since December 2010. The north of Edinburgh has never exactly been renowned for getting a lot of snow anyway so on that basis, we have actually done quite well for snow during this winter.
As far as the temperature goes, both December and January brought average temperatures overall. December in particular, swing from being cold at certain times and being really mild at other times, whilst January was a lot more mundane although temperatures only really managed to come out around average during January due to a really mild end to that month after it had looked as though that was going to be colder than average overall. This month on the other hand, has been colder than average without any double figure temperatures being recorded here during this month so far and thanks to this latest SSW event, there is the potential for this month to finish on a very cold note although it is forecast to be a bit milder before then. When you had all of that together, this hasn't been a severe winter here, but it has technically, been a cold winter here thanks to this month being colder than average. In the end, this will go down as our coldest winter since the winter of 2012/13 as a result, although this is really mainly down to how mild the rest of the winters since then have been, rather than being down to this winter being especially cold.
Whilst it has been a colder than average winter overall though, this has actually been very much a front-loaded winter when you look at it in terms of the number of official air frosts. That is because December was actually the only month during this winter where we have had a decent number of official air frosts, as well as being when we had what to date, has been our only official ice day of the entire winter so far. Since then, there has been a general deterioration in the number of official air frosts. January was very poor in that respect, but this month has been even worse. Here in Edinburgh, the worst of my three local stations for that was Edinburgh Gogarbank where there has just been two days so far this month where an official air frost has been recorded, and even that was just one night with an official air frost which had technically, been spread across two different calendar days. The other two locations had the odd other occasion where there was an official air frost (especially Edinburgh Airport), but those were only brief occasions which lasted for only an hour or so before the temperature then jumped back up again. That is very poor fare indeed for what is supposed to be the coldest time of the year overall, and I have every right to complain about that as a result.
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.