Cold Here In The City
 

It was 53F this morning when I left for work! Has anyone else have strange weather lately?

Oh yeah. All through July, polar vortex after polar vortex.

Used my A/C only three days in July. Still haven't put away my armwarmers and kneewarmers.

OTOH, it's fantastic cycling weather.

Having lived in Fort Collins through 4 summers, 53°F summer overnight temps don't strike me as unusual. Here in the lowlands we also saw temperatures like that, during a couple of unseasonably cool spells earlier this month.

86 degrees before sunrise. 110 on the way home. :)

We had two brief morning showers last week which is very rare in this area during the summer. Since moving here 20 years ago we have never had any rain between early June and early October. Of course it wasn't enough to have any impact on our drought which is entering its third year. It was a warm rain so was actually very pleasant for riding.

July expected to be the third coldest on record here. I prefer to bicycle in the mornings but being retired it hasn't been too disrupting to switch to afternoon cycling. But even then it's been cool.

It has also been a wetter than normal summer. I accept that I may get rained on from time to time but this is the first cycling season where I gone cycling fully expecting to get wet. As long as I don't get too cold.... I really don't mind.

I bicycle [a planned goal of] 2000 miles a year. Today I hit the half-way mark of 1000 miles for this year/season.

July has been a 2 faced month this year. On one side, oppressively hot & humid, on the other side, this odd cool/dry weather towards the end. We have also seen -the weirdest- storms since moving here many years ago. Storms that are more typical of tropical climates with tons of rain and wind, and moderate to light thunder/lightning.

One thing is for sure, the climate is changing. About 10 years ago the usual seasonal cycles and weather have started to get more and more erratic. This last winter we had an ice storm that put 4 million people in the dark right after we had one of the biggest (in time vs accumulation) snow storms in recent memory that caught many people off guard. We also saw one day go from 55 degrees in the afternoon, to minus 2 degrees that same night.

Strange (and concerning) stuff.

- Andy

Definitely weird this year ... have had many mornings in the 50s, where I'm wearing long sleeves. And have had a few afternoons where I'm in short sleeves but should be in long sleeves. Today is just about perfect as far as weather goes. Between 66-68 on the ride in, upper 70s for the ride home.

I turned 50 recently and have spent all of my living within a 75 mile radius of where I'm at now. Two years ago we had an exceptionally dry Summer and Fall. This Spring and early Summer have been exceptionally wet. Are these extremes just the result of natural variation or is climate change playing a role?

I have no idea.

There have been wet years before and dry years. Cold and Hot. My memory is neither long enough nor accurate enough to identify any long term trends. If pressed though I'd have to say that we get more rain and less snow in the winter now than when I was young and they are probably warmer (in general). It seemed like the idea of rain in January was almost unheard of then. Of course I was a kid at the time.

I do believe that global climate change is being caused by human activity and that there will be dire consequences for many people. I'm not really a gloom and doom guy though so I doubt that some of the scarier scenarios will come to pass. I also believe that one way or another we will have to reduce our high consumption of fossil fuels and other resources.

It's been very cold this week for the end of july but the big difference around here since the last 8-10 months is the Wind, it's more windy and the Winds are a lot stronger. I dress according to the temperature so a few degrees more or less is easy to deal with but the Wind is a pain in the a*$. There's nothing to do about winds but fight it or enjoy it depending on the way you go.

I hate Wind...

Right here in Belgium, it's warm. One of the warmest summers I had since ages... Looks like we had summer from March until now :)

And before March, in winter time... it was a warm winter, it hardly froze.

I always have strange weather. 53 in San Francisco in July isn't that strange, particularly if foggy and windy.

common overnight low in the summer is 50's, here.. 75, now at 13:26.

I've used my AC twice this year at home, and have been loving the cooler temperatures this year. Especially after the miserable heat and humidity we had last summer.

Mornings for the last week or so have been between 48 - 54 degrees. Definitely unseasonably cold.

I'm fat enough that I'm still sufficiently warm wearing just a t-shirt and shorts, although when it gets close to 50 I do don some cycling gloves.

It's definitely been cooler around here, especially compared to last summer's very high temps. By this time last year I think we'd had a few 100° days but I think we've only had a couple of 90's this year. It's much cooler at night, which is nice because I can leave the windows open in the bedroom (the AC is old and doesn't really cool off the upstairs very well, so it's uncomfortably warm with the windows shut and the AC keeping the rest of the house cool). It's been nice to ride early in the day too, with sub-70° temps quite often.

Seriously, for the beginning of August this is pretty cool for us.

It's been warmer than normal here this summer, but not intolerable. I have been cheating recently and driving to the bank or beer store just so I can blast the A/C for a few minutes.