Actually I think this might be good news for the upcoming winter. I believe that the most brutal winters have come on the uptick of activity after minimum and I think even though activity isn't great it has ramped up against forecast which I assume is based on historic data which shows a slower increase in activity.
I am a believer that this increase in activity is one of the drivers for the extreme weather events we are seeing around the world be it snow in brazil, extreme rainfall events around the world, heat in Greece/Turkey and on the west coast of the states