Does this mean that this winter could be dominated by an El Niño type pattern despite being in cold neutral borderline La Niña state?

That's all I ask at this point. These last few days have been 100% depressing.

I kinda like the setup at the end of the 00z, this could progress into something good.

To be fair, the first time I ever saw random people wave at me was on Camano Island. Of course that's very common here where I live or across the river in Idaho. But when it first happened on Camano, my wife who grew up there shrugged and didn't think anything of it.

Even if we head into a milder pattern later in December, I think at this point it's fairly safe to say that it will feel more like December than most of them in the past decade. But ultimately, I think people tend to judge based on snowfall, so a normalish or even colder than average December that lacks snow won't be thought of too well. We'll see how it shakes out.