The white stuff is coming down this morning. Not very heavily and it can't have started too long before I woke because then there were only traces of it on patches of bare ground and not on the grass (where it must have been melting on contact); now it's starting to show on the grass as well.
So now I get to feel pleased with myself that I got everything I needed to do done on the two warm days off I took and get to spend the weekend lazily watching the winter preview from inside. :-)