The Oil Drum

Weather isn't climate, yes, quite so, but this US-and-Canada thing, I dunno. China is a huge landmass too and they had big, well-publicized record-setting problems this year, and that extended on west through Iran. That leaves only the micro-countries of Europe, where, IIRC, on the whole it was warm-ish. Then there's the Southern Hemisphere, but there's precious little land (outside of Antarctica) that has much of a winter (in almost all inhabited places, the average low in the coldest month seems to be over freezing.) So there's no significant sample to go on. No matter what happens in the very, very few inhabited areas that do have real winter, one can always attribute it to a localized effect perhaps caused by a high or a low parking somewhere for a while, which after all does happen now and again.