First snow of the Winter

I'm ready for it over here but we been having a steady diet of warm fronts keeping the snow away.  This has been the mildest fall I can remember. Other areas in the region have gotten a fair amount of snow but we have been spared here.

Hopefully your dusting will melt away quickly so you can prolong your riding season. 

It's a bugger when the snow hits alright.

So far we've been pretty lucky this winter so far. Temperatures are still in the 10-15 celsius range despite GMT daylight savings hours starting three weeks ago.

That's effectively three weeks off our winter thankfully.

Time to dust off the ol mountain bike. I rigged up a tow rope to put on the seat post and towed my 3 kids around the neighborhood on a sled for a half hour. Its great resistance training and they love it.

I been lucky so far. We have had some snow in the higher elevations but the weekends have been reasonable for training.

I just ordered one of those Proform TDF trainers in anticipation of bad weather and yes it does get too bad to ride outside. I will review it when I have tested it out for a while. 

We had a late October snow ("Octostorm") in New England with 4"-24" of snow depending depending on location, then a quick warm up.  Set out on a 90 mile group ride Nov 6 with a morning temp of 36*F and a mid day high of 55*F.  What perfect riding conditions!!    No need for cold weather gear, lots of color change in the trees, sunny day, a climb to a "mountain" (Wachusett) summit at the mid point of the ride, and great company.  As we climbed above 1,000 feet, we ran into some of the leftover snow from Octostorm.   Was able to ride a black ribbon of melted snow through some large snow patches and had to put a foot down and push through others.  Just a great day.

We've been extremely lucky for NW Minnesota this year. Only a couple of dustings so far and well above seasonal average temps most of the time. I've been getting in 10-15 miles a day lately. Sounds like we are going to get our first shovelable snow over the next few days but I'm hoping the roads will stay clear enough so that I can keep riding. I suspect that I won't be able to ride local roads much longer as I'm in a rural area and the roads tend to get very rough and icy mid-winter.

Merry christmas everybody!

we been lucky this time last year we were snowed in

1/1/2011   leftovers from 12/26 blizzard.  So far this year we have had no snow fall at all. Great year for riding I logged 360 miles out on the roads this past December most ever.   

Expecting snow tonight. Finally will get to ski. 

When I talked to my daughter and wife tonight, they said they had 4 inches on the farm, with the snow continuing to fall unabated.  They're expecting snow for another two days.

Here?  Nada.  We're supposed to have temps in the 70's for the next week, but there is snow on top of Mt Lemmon.  While we might not get snow in town this year, we did finish off 2011 w/ more rain than the average yearly rainfall, something that hasn't happened since 1997.  Woo hoo!

Still no significant accumulations of snow / ice on the roads in central Minnesota. I was able to put good rides in on the 30 and 31st of december and the past weekend. I only encountered one icy, snow packed downhill on a short shaded section of closed road near a golf course; I let the bike go where it wanted and I managed to stay upright. The rest of the roads are dry.

The temperature was 50+ yesterday and looks to be the same today.

Perhaps we will be punished soon?