Alarmists claim that snow is caused by missing Arctic ice, but the historical record provides no support for that idea.
The graph below plots January Northern Hemisphere snow extent vs. January Arctic ice extent. There is no correlation. The years with highest and lowest snow extent both occurred with ~15 million km^2 of Arctic ice.
RSQ= 0.26
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Jan/N_01_area.txt
Looking at it, it appears there is a negative slope. That would mean that less arctic ice does mean more snow extent, but large variability.
What the trend line look like?
Have you tried plotting the Summer Ice extent against the Snow, as that is what prompted the “it’s the lack of Arctic Ice stories.