The last two summers here before this one were decent, and we even had a decent start to this one. Had this summer been decent overall as well, I would have been very concerned about the coming winter because when we are in a run of decent summers, I would expect the corresponding winters to be mild.
However, this summer is shaping up to be a front-loaded summer, but a poor summer overall. Poor summers tend to be more likely to be followed by cold winters, so I agree that this could act in our favour. There are a number of factors to consider though.
Firstly, there is El Nino. If that becomes too strong as it did in 2015, there is a danger that this could in a 2015-16 style very wet, mild and stormy winter. Also, I believe that if El Nino is mostly east based and focused right next to the Peruvian coast, that could also against us getting a cold winter. However, a Modoki or central or western based El Nino could improve our chances of getting a cold winter.
Then there is the solar activity. At the moment, our position within solar cycle 25 is analogous to where we were in solar cycle 24 back in 2015. We are probably only around 2 years away from solar maximum and regardless of how the rest of solar cycle 25 pans out, we already know that this will at the very least, be a slightly stronger solar cycle than what solar cycle 24.
Although this solar cycle is not expected to be as strong as solar cycle 23, this goes very much against us getting a cold winter on this occasion.
In addition to that, there are a lot of warm SSTs around. The SSTs in the NE Pacific Ocean appears to be very warm just now and when that happens, that never bodes very well for a cold winter here. However, we have an Easterly QBO developing at the moment, and that usually favours a colder winter here.
A lot might well depend on what the models are saying but at the moment, it is really too early to say how this will actually affect things. If was forced to make an early forecast on that, I would go for a fairly average winter in terms of the temperature, but a rather wet winter with possibly, a higher than average amount of snow.
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.