Always look forward to John's predictions but the fact that we're starting to talk about snowfall predictions is a good sign, regardless of the source.
The recent low snow years in some midwest areas has seemed to work in favor of Minnesota. From a snowfall perspective, the last two years have been outstanding in far northern MN and resulted in some of the best snow depths I've seen in a long time. The conditions across the state appeared to be generally better as well.
While the U.P. has been down somewhat, it certainly hasn't been a washout. More often than not, we've had great riding snow up there. What has seemed unique about the last two years in U.P. (at least to me) is the massive meltdowns in late Feb. - early Mar. This year, we were riding in 65 - 70 degree weather in late February - crazy.