Monday marks the beginning of Winter Hazard Awareness Week, a state effort to get residents prepared for harsh, dangerous weather ahead, the Star Tribune reports. Officials fear that mild winter may have lulled people into a sense of complacency, the newspaper reports.

The Minnesota Department of Public Safety is focusing on a range of wintry risks this week on its website. Among them: winter storms and winter driving.

Is this going to be a bad winter? Mixed signals among indicators make it hard to predict, weather experts have said. The University of Minnesota's Mark Seeley says climate change makes seasonal forecasts tough to make.

Unpredictable El Nino behavior makes it tough to predict, MPR's Paul Huttner wrote in his Updraft blog. He notes that some indicators suggest another milder winter, but another suggests "a few bigger snowstorms in the Upper Midwest."