mostly means a warmer, drier, sunnier winter

I really hope not, but the NOAA 3-month outlook is bleak for those of us who enjoy winter. It might be even worse than last year, and last year's snowfall was historic amounts of awful. Many snow monitoring stations were at 30-year lows, or worse. I had a planned winter camping trip last February, and instead of snow we had sunny 60-degree afternoons. Ski areas were barely operating.