There's not only a temperature gradient for lighning/thunder, but also it requires moist rising air, too. I don't know which is more important, though. (I can anecdotally say that in 15 years living in Alaska, I only saw lightning once, during the summer -- but I lived in a drier region).
One point I haven't seen: ground frost. Not the little irksome frosts you might get: *permafrost*. A winter so bad, when the spring planting comes you realize that the frost lurks a foot or two below the surface, waiting... winter lurking just beyond...
Hard to plant; impossible to lay foundations (I remember putting up fenceposts in June, and having to pound the auger in with mallets because of the permafrost). Deep-rooting plants may suffer. Wells may chill or split or dry up. Frost heaves here and there, destroying roads, foundations, etc. Doom and gloom everywhere!
For that matter, merely a *solid* winter freezing means trouble. I fondly remember each year in Alaska the speculation about winter; y'see, if too many people died during the winter, you either had to cremate 'em or stuff 'em in a freezer, because it was impossible to dig a grave in winter short of explosives. So various "wintery" chores may become impossible.
For a weird effect, you can get thermakarst, too: if frozen ground thaws and refreezes the right way, the ground appears to be cracked -- obviously horrible wounds in the earth caused by winter!
There's probably some interesting stuff to be used from the accounts of 1816 "The Year Without a Summer," the year after Mt. Tambora blew its top...
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