It was a rather pleasent morning. I was worried last night that the wind might keep up until today, but the early evening gusts died down overnight and there was barely a breeze.

Throw on the studs and you'd find that it's quite safe. I ride my bike to work every day, all year. I use studs when there's a realistic chance of frozen stuff. And believe it or not, freezing rain is the easiest surface to ride on when you have studs. Surface is completely smooth and the studs give great grip.

Riding in snow/ice can also be fun as hell.

The question of safety in traffic is an entirely separate one. My commute is almost exclusively MUP, so it's not an issue for me. I might rethink it if I were especially near heavy traffic on poorly treated roads.

My commute is divided between wide lanes and the WO&D to Herndon (next to Reston). I've found that ice, sleet, fresh snow are not an issue with studded tires. The issue on the WO&D is it's not plowed and 2+ inches stamped down, pitted, iced over becomes a washboard surface that pulls forcefully on the handlbars as I try to steer straight.

I find that riding around cars on the iced over street isn't difficult - the bike has much better maneuverability than the other vehicles.

If you won't ever question the "has to", under any circumstances, I guess you're just fated to have to come into work no matter what, fire earthquake tsunami insurrection or whatever. OTOH, if you got killed trying to come in to work, the cells and viruses wouldn't care about that either, but you sure wouldn't be showing up at work to "tend to them". Something to think about.

That's just over-the-top for the sake of being silly.
There are plenty of situations when our Facilities department closes the place down; we call the hotline and get the recording which says "don't come in today." Yesterday was an exceptional situation involving only 1 road leading from my neighbourhood to the office. Leaving my parking lot, the roads were fine: I never would have attempted heading in if the 2.25 mile twisty downhill from my apartment if it was iced over. The highways were clear, most of the other arterial roadways were not solid ice rinks, so there were no facility closures. If I weren't so insistent on an early schedule, the roads were actually clear of ice 2 hours after my incident.

It has been my experience, both last winter and so far this winter, that the traffic tends to give me more room in inclement weather. They are usually going a little slower too.

I actually think that some of the folks in cars are kind of getting used to me now. I see a lot of the same cars on a daily basis.

do you have studs?

I have studs.

then time on the MUP is safer

Don't have a MUP.

guess that was meant for clifton

The old rail bed might be considered a MUP. But in the winter, it isn't plowed. I would rather take my chances with the traffic than with the crazy snowmobilers.

Sorry, I will go away now

I came across some crazy snomobilers in my 4x4 once. they were wearing long guns with shoulder straps across their chest. I couldn't wait to get out of there. too back I was stuck and blocking them. they were pissed and didn't help while I extracted myself.

We very rarely have just ice on the roads. The only time we get that is when the air temp is fairly warm but the roads are cold. Typically road salt is pretty effective in those situations.

More often an intersection will get icy or it might suddenly turn cold after being warm enough to have standing water.

Plain old ice is very passable on studded tires but I doubt I would venture out into a high traffic area.

Exact situation we had. 31F overnight temperatures after a long stretch of highs in the upper 20s. Then a morning ambient of 35F with rain that froze up into a solid sheet on the pavement. They had prepped all the hills and highways, but didn't do much of anything to this relatively flat stretch of road.

Right, because people with firearms are always about to snap at any minute and start shooting everyone in sight.

o/t i know but... d&d reference? NICE