Winter of discontent in the pipeline. (UK)

Scare stories about energy prices and cold winters are not uncommon, but their stark predictions haven’t come true. That’s partly because over the past 15 years, most winters have been comparatively mild.

But that could be about to change: the Met Office has just published its first forecast covering the 2005/06 winter (the North Atlantic Oscillation Report) and it ‘places the winter of 2005/06 among the coldest third of winters over the last 50 years of the 20th century’.