JPprivate

Calling it a 'journal' might be overstating it. I was inspired by somebody on a bike winter website who essentially made the case that biking in winter isn't all that bad, there isn't that much snow, meaning you won't have constant snow fall from Dec 1 - through March 1, the streets are usually pretty clean, and it's not always subfreezing either. So I decided to keep track of the weather and road conditions starting Dec 1 until mid March on my particular route.

This is for Chicago, however my commute is of course different than others in the city. How much snow/ice is on road very much depends on what route you choose even within one and the same city. In general, I chose small residential roads over larger roads, meaning I encountered more snow than probably others did who chose different streets..

'1' in the columns means yes, '0' means no. If it was at any point (while riding my bike) under 32 I marked it '1'/yes. Obviously because I left in morning, I usually rode my bike during some of the coldest hours of the day. Frequently the morning was under 32, the afternoons were above 32.

The ICE column indicates if roads had slush/snow/ice. If there was at least a larger patch of snow or ice on my way which I couldn't ride around than I checked the ICE column. This was at times a judgment call, but usually it was pretty straight forward.

We had above average snow. Especially February was very snowy. March was warmer than usual, with little snow (so far).

The 'winter conditions' column is an OR connection between under 32 and ICE, not sure how helpful that is.

I hope this is interesting, however, in hindsight I would have done things a little different, probably would have added another temperature column for let's say 'under 10'.