The forecasters have been going on about cold, lack of stormy weather and the like for an age now.

But it hasn't been that cold has it? I mean, there's been some cold nights, notably in the Somerset levels & Thames valley, but overall http://www.met..reading.ac.uk/~brugge/anomt.jpg more places have been mild of late.

I saw a recent video clip where John Hammond went on about the lack of storminess compared with last year. True, if you live in much of Scotland, NW England or N Wales, so it was unfortunate that he showed a picture of a stormy Penzance prom. Not sure when it was taken, but certainly not last November as was implied, when the stongest gust here was just 44mph and there were only 2 days with onshore winds. In fact pointing to an example from SW England was a bad call as Nov 2016 has been a wetter than 2015 across much of the southern half of England. In the SW whilst nothing much happened in November last year, the railway line was washed away in several places this year. He should have pointed to somewhere 'up north'.

Anyway, back to the cold - or rather lack of it.
V. cold Yr Normal Yr.
Penzance 2010 2016
MIN MAX MIN MAX
24/11 2.2 9.1 5.4 12.7
25/11 0.5 6.3 7.6 10.3
26/11 2.1 7.4 7.2 10.1
27/11 0.6 4.2 3.7 9.8
28/11 -4.3! 4.6 5.7 9.7
29/11 -3.8 3.3 3.4 8.0
30/11 -2.0 3.2 0.1 10.7
01/12 -0.6 3.1 1.3 11.5
02/12 -1.5 2.3 2.5 10.4
03/12 -3.0 6.1 7.3 9.7
04/12 -0.7 8.7 8.0 11.4 (at 09:00 today)
05/12 2.8 5.8 9.3 (13.0C looks likely)

Where are people like Lamb & Philip Eden to add a bit of historically perspective when you need them?

I think part of the issue is people now spend so much time gazing into model forecasts, supported by a stream of MetO 'it's going to a cold, cold winter' clips, that actual observations fall into 2nd place. I won't go into a rant about the MetO lack of interest in observations, but if you ask me . .