Winter is already here on the continent of Australia.  And winter is definitely coming to Westeros, but it's going to be delayed on your TV screens after show runners for "Game of Thrones" confirm that Season 7 will arrive at a later date than prior seasons.

In fact, Winter is exactly why Season 7 will be delayed. 

"We don't have an air date yet, but this year it'll be a little bit later," said showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss, referring to 2017.  "We're starting a bit later because at the end of this season, 'Winter is here,' and that means that sunny weather doesn't really serve our purposes any more.  So we kind of pushed everything down the line, so we could get some grim grey weather even in the sunnier places that we shoot."

For each of its prior six seasons, "GoT" has premiered between 31 March and 30 April.  The upcoming seasons will likely have more digital special effects, from Daenerys Targaryen's Dragons to the Whitewalkers of the north, and all sorts of battles between the houses.  Hell, maybe Cersei still has a few gallons of wildfire leftover. 

They also confirmed that only two more seasons of "GoT" remain, and they may be shorter than previous seasons.  The series has now moved ahead of what George RR Martin has written in the series of books on which "Game of Thrones" is based.