Thank you very much.  I personally find these methods very interesting!  However, what stops me from weighting them is that I don't understand the physical connection between persimmon (or another method) and the upcoming winter.  I'm guessing, but it would seem to imply that there is a preceding climate pattern that causes the seed to take on certain attributes (i.e. a mild autumn).  More directly, we can can just look at the climate pattern and see if that helps us to predict the winter.  What we find is that persistence forecasts (using the past to predict the future) are not as good (less skillful) than today's state-of-the-art statistical and dynamical models.  Also, keep in mind that when CPC states "winter outlook" we are discussing the period from December-February, so we have yet to see how things turn out.