"Martin Sykes" wrote
That's a LITTLE unfair - but only a little. The Met. Office has
refused to comment, saying that prediction that far ahead is too
hard. snip

IME, there's always quite a bit of hype at this time of year about the
forthcoming winter and most of it turns out to be wildly inaccurate.

I do have to say that, at the moment, the professional forecasts for the
UK next week look unusually wintry for mid-October. For those of you who
are interested, there's a very good German meteorology site at:
http://www.wetterzentrale.de/ and this covers Europe, including the UK.

As well as other high-quality information, the UK Met Office (UKMO)
forecast charts are on there at
http://www.wetterzentrale.de/topkarten/fsfaxbra.html and cover the period
up to + 132 hrs (click on the list towards the top of each page to see
each chart).

They need to be looked at with caution as they can change quickly,
particularly as one looks further ahead than the next day or two.

- Tom.