Originally Posted by
mdilthey
Wind and road conditions: Absolutely worried about this. Machka's posts have been especially enlightening. Basically, leaving to "go do the northern tier" is pretty foolish. A better decision is to do a few shorter Northeast tours in midwinter, when I can be rescued by friends and family. I'll try out some different tires, some fenders, and try to get out on all of the sub-zero days. It doesn't get much more brutal than the White Mountains and Upstate NY in the winter, so the northeast will make a fine gauntlet with which to learn winter touring.
Shorter northeast tours sounds like a better idea.
With regard to the road conditions ... you could luck out and end up with beautiful roads ... or not. There is absolutely no way to predict that now and it could be difficult to predict even a few days in advance of when you'll be there.
And if the US is anything like Canada when it comes to clearing roads, the quality and speed of the clearing will vary widely from place to place.
Something else you might consider is setting off in late February/early March. By the time you get to the prairies, it might be early to mid-April and although there can still be blizzards right up till the middle of May or so, you'll have a much greater chance of finding clear roads to ride on. Then you might hit the mountains in early to mid-May and you'll have a greater chance of better weather conditions then.