Why am I not surprised.

Seems the Met Office knew there was a big freeze coming, but decided not to say as they'd been embarrassed by the previous "Barbecue Summer" fiasco, well that's their story anyway.

Mail.

The Met Office warned ministers to expect an ‘exceptionally cold winter’ but then kept the prediction secret from the public.

The forecaster decided not to reveal the information because it was embarrassed after wrongly predicting a ‘barbecue summer’ in 2009, BBC analyst Roger Harrabin said.

Instead of a seasonal forecast, it offered only monthly snapshots.The disclosure raises questions over whether transport authorities and councils could have been better prepared for the cold snap which brought chaos before Christmas.

As temperatures fell to a record low, train services were badly disrupted, roads were covered by snow and thousands were stranded at Heathrow as flights were cancelled and the airport struggled to clear the backlog.

Last night Mr Harrabin said: ‘With Britain shivering through a third winter in a row, shouldn’t the weather forecasters have warned us well in advance? Why didn’t the Met Office tell us?

‘The truth is it did suspect we were in for an exceptionally cold early winter, and told the Cabinet Office so in October. 

‘But we weren’t let in on the secret because the Met Office no longer publishes its seasonal forecasts due to the ridicule it suffered for predicting a barbecue summer in 2009.

‘It did forecast in November that December would be bitter, but many of us may have taken the prediction with a truckload of salt.’

So they knew, or claimed they knew. They told the government (or claimed they did) and were either ignored as the government believe it's getting warmer or just decided it might be good for a laugh to see what might happen to all the councils and transport companies who were told that they didn't need all that extra salt as 3 times in a row of bad winter weather was in the region of 5000 to 1.
Personally I like many others believe you cannot trust the Met Office further than you could throw them, their ethos has been pro global warming and carbon reduction for over a decade now. So I have my doubts they "said" anything strongly to the government, it was probably an addendum to a file for the long range forecast that the government gets but the Met Office don't publish. A bit tacked onto the end saying December might be a bit snowy, but it's unlikely because of the odds and global warming. Still it does look good them saying "we told you so" even when they probably didn't...