Sometimes meteorologists receive more publicity than they might wish.
This may be the case, one suspects, as regards the recent tentative suggestion by the UK Met Office, based on its analysis of a strange concept called the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), that winter 2005-6 could be colder than many recently have been.
"Shock Weather Warning!" scream the headlines; the reality may well be less extreme.
The NAO is based on average pressure values in the north Atlantic. The "normal" state of the atmosphere in this part of the world involves a zone of high pressure in the vicinity of the Azores and low pressure close to Iceland.
But at any particular time the atmosphere may differ significantly from this ideal; the Azores high may be particularly dominant and the Iceland low simultaneously intense, or alternatively both features may be displaced - or "fuzzy" and less well defined - than usual.
A useful "index" of the state of the atmosphere in this context is the difference in atmospheric pressure between, say, Lisbon in Portugal and Reykjavik in Iceland.
For convenience, the index is said to be positive when higher than its average value, and negative when it is lower. A positive index implies a strong Azores anticyclone and a deep Icelandic low.
Now, high positive values of the NAO are associated with strong westerly winds blowing steadily across the north Atlantic, wafting mild, moist air towards central and northern Europe in the winter; rainfall is high, but the winters are unusually benign.
Negative values, on the other hand, are associated with a "lazier" atmosphere, where the northern European winters are cold and harsh due to an increased frequency of northerly and easterly winds.
There is a rough pattern to the behaviour of the index.
It was generally positive in the period from around 1905 to 1940, had dipped strongly negative by the 1960s and rose from then to a historic high in the early 1990s.
This variation over the decades is known as the North Atlantic Oscillation, and the current brouhaha has arisen because the Met Office has predicted a negative value of the index - minus one, to be precise - for the coming winter.
But stay a while before ordering emergency supplies of food and winter clothing. First, the British Met Office's usual seasonal forecast out to the end of January, based on conventional numerical prediction methods, suggests that, on the contrary, this winter may be generally mild.
Furthermore, as regards predicting the behaviour of the NAO, the Met Office itself emphasises that its forecasts are experimental, and modestly declares its success rate to be "reasonable, but by no means high". They reckon they get the "sign" correct - whether the NAO will be positive or negative - in just two winters out of every three.
So, it may well happen that this winter will turn out very cold indeed. But no one, as yet, is predicting this with any certainty.