Crazy Weather
 

Here in Boulder(CO), we got 11" of Snow! Buffalo, NY didn't any of the White stuff. How strange is the weather where you are at?

It feels like summer here in Virginia. Mid-sixties the past few days with some summer-style rains. Snow seems a world away...

It was 68 overnight here in NYC. The temperature has dropped during the day but it is probably still in the upper 50's. Just... Plain... Weird.

Here in Colorado Springs, only 2-3 inches on the south end, 5-6 up north. Tuesdays I have to drive, and it was icy all the way...ice rink icy. I kept wishing I had studded snow tires like on my bike. And then my evening meeting was cancelled so I could have rode the bike. They're predicting 17F during my morning ride tomorrow and upper 20s just after sunset for the ride home. I don't know if I could have rode in 11-inches of snow, I did 6 inches on knobbies 20+ years ago, and I remembered walking more than riding.

+1 I pulled out all of my winter stuff back in October. It's not plain weird, it's weird with extra strange on top.

Crazy weather indeed! It was in the low 70's on Sunday. Last year it was in the 60's on Christmas day, then we got walloped with the coldest February I can remember. Was it the year before, we had snow before Halloween? So yeah, crazy weather this year... just like every year.

Normally, the local ski hills (bumps) would be anticipating a pre-Christmas opening for the first week of the Christmas school holidays but not a flake of snow on the ground. It was coldish last night, -6C/21F but it is going up to +3C/37F in middle of tonight. Seasonal norms are -5C daytime highs, -15C overnight lows, we're not even close at the moment.

The hardest part for me, with regard to bike commuting, is whether or not I put on the studded tires and whether or not I want to brave cold rain.

could have *ridden*
(Is it in bad taste to do that?)

It's been low 30s and raining here in the Twin Cities in the morning, high 30s to low 40s in the afternoon. I've never seen the ground so saturated in the fall. We are finally supposed to get a few days of cold weather over the weekend, then warming up again into the 30s. I've been tracking the weather in International Falls, as I'm doing the Arrowhead Ultra late January. A soggy, warm mess with no snow would be horrible.

Why do you consider this "crazy"? It's December. It's 5 days from the winter solstice which is the "official" start of winter but those of us who actually experience weather know that winter started 30 to 90 days ago depending on when the first frost was.

What's "crazy" about Colorado weather is that it's going to be 40°F by Friday and nearly 60°F by Saturday and all of that 11" of snow will be a distant memory.

What's even "crazier" is that I started my commute this morning at 13°F and that the temperature 9 miles west of me and 1000' higher was 26°F. That's nutz and is extremely difficult to dress for.

A couple weeks before T'giving, we had a dusting of snow. It melted inside of two days. Friday night (12/18) is forecast to be below freezing, the first time SINCE then.

Today, the projected high is in the low 50's.

My town does a sponsored public ride on Jan 1; looks like this year will be the warmest in almost a decade. I've missed the last 7-8 because of the snow/surface conditions.

let me put it this way. i've only ridden my studded tire winter beast once so far this season. in chicago!

it's VERY unusual to be halfway through december and only ridden my studded tire bike once.

and the long term forecast looks like i won't need my winter beast until after christmas, at the earliest.


weird, wild, wacky stuff.

Yes, that's weird and wacky. 11" of snow along the Colorado Front Range is December isn't. It hardly rises to the level of "notable".

Here in sunny San Diego, it's been in the 30s the last few nights. I've switched to ski gloves for my morning commutes; it's nice to have toasty warm hands as I ride past parked cars covered in frost!

Are you sure that was frost and not just extra salt deposits? Being from San Diego, are you sure you even know what frost looks like?:rolleyes:

It don't bother me none. ;)

Being in San Diego, I don't know what salt on cars looks like...

You're closer to a large reservoir of salt and water then I am. Of course, CDOT is attempting to change that.

True, but typically we don't drive our cars in that large reservoir of salt water. I remember one of my dad's observations when we moved to CA from MI in the 70's, "cars out here just don't have rust!"

I don't get your joke about CDOT, are they trying to reduce the salinity of the pacific ocean?

But you do have "salt air" which puts more salt on the cars.

CDOT has gone the Michigan route in applying lots and lots of salt to the roads. That increases the salinity of the water here.

37 Deg.F this morning when I decided not to commute because it's too cold! When I was a kid (relatively speaking) back in St. Louis I remember riding when it was -6 and here I am, living in SoCal, thinking 37 is too cold.

Makes no sense, but then again I am older (65) and more of a wuss!

Rick / OCR

We had 70's over the weekend. Yesterday my commute home from work was in a long-sleeve jersey and shorts.

This week and last week, one year ago, all my commutes were in the 30's and 40's. This year they've been in the 50's and 60's mostly. Last Friday morning at 6 AM it was 60 degrees which is insane!

Seems to me that the weather is rarely "normal." Ph.D. climatologists on the weather channel confuse the issue by using "normal" in the statistical sense (meaning average), while most of the audience hears "normal" in the colloquial sense (meaning normal). The weather people (almost said weather man there for a second) talk about temperatures, precipitation, etc. as though they follow "normal" (meaning Gaussian) distributions, neglecting to tell the rest of us that the statistical "normal" temperature occurs only a small percentage of the time in that "normal" distribution.

(What's wrong with "average?"

Kind of an unusual winter so far here in South Dakota. Started with an unusually late hard freeze that didn't hit until the 2nd week of November, which was more than a month later than usual and more than a week later than the previous record.

Then we proceeded to get about 30" of snow during the month of November spread across three or four different events, but about 26" of it falling in two storms.

When December hit, the temps raised back up in the mid 30's for a good chunk of the 1st half of the month, which effectively melted most of the snow. I switched back from my winter bike to my regular commuter.

Today we had more snow, and the forecast has the temps falling back to our normal December single digits in the next few days. So I'm back on my winter bike.

It was 10* colder in Sacramento last night than it was in Boston.

Yeah, it's kind of crazy. Monday morning( 6 AM), it was 55° F. When I left work at 4 PM, it was 63°. Shorts and T-shirt weather in the middle of December. It's supposed to cool off this weekend, but be back up in the 50's next week. I'm really glad I put those studded tires on!:)

I never thought that made much of a difference more than a mile or two from the beach.

Yesterday or today (I'm not sure which), the east coast was warmer than the west coast, and Arizona was the coldest place in the lower 48.

Winter starts here when the roadies get tired of cycling for the season.

Speak for yourself, I think it's fantastic. :D :P