The thing that a lot of people forget is that, though these temps are close to normal for certain areas of the world they are not even close to normal for most parts of the UK. We see the posts of "oh well it's -20 here", yes it is but those type of temps come around every year. From all of my years in UK I very rarely saw significant amounts of snow or temps in negative figures, since moving to the US I see these things every winter and expect them.
