I am going to respectfully disagree with ETA to a certain extent.
As practitioners, we generally speak of the deadline for the SH notice as 30 days before the plan year, or December 1 , 2016 in this case. However, the law simply requires that the notice is distributed within a reasonable period before any year. A notice distributed 30-90 days prior to the beginning of the plan year is deemed to meet the reasonable time period requirement. That does not mean that a notice does not meet the reasonable time period requirement because it is less than 30 days. You would need to satisfy a facts and circumstances test to show that your notice period was reasonable.
I am not saying that it is reasonable in the OPs situation, but if the circumstances were right, it is possible that it can be.