The Great British Weather

I prescribe a dose of HTFU.

1. Any cunt can ride in -4, its calling it perfect riding weather that is clearly bullshit.
   
2. I'm sticking to the turbo not because of the temp, it's about the ice.
   

My mate's over here. https://weather.gc.ca/warnings/index_e.html?prov=sk

It's -31.

Your weather is weak.

How was your weekend, sweetheart?

This is OneLessCardigan. He reckons -4 degrees C is perfect riding weather when it's clearly something around -24 degrees C. HTFU, OneLessCardigan. :)

Good thanks. Did a short ride yesterday morning before the kids were up, it was nice being out as the sun came up, messing about in the woods, crashing through icy puddles, etc.

Apart from the cleanup afterwards, sounds fun. I thought about taking the Inbred out but I would've just ridden it on the road so didn't bother. There's shared paths around here but nothing like woods.

An old friend of mine used to ride to work in Calgary during the winter. Full ski gear with goggles at -30. He was missing a screw or two.

If I lived there I'd have to find out a way to ride there.

Looks like someone has already prepared some tips:
https://www.icebike.org/winter-cycling-in-ottawa-canada-this-is-how-it-is/

I would almost certainly use the snow to justify the purchase of a fatbike, needed or not.

Montreal, too:

https://montrealgazette.com/life/winter-biking-in-montreal-no-sweat

purchase of a fatbike

Just a bike for you right?

GPWM

#hippyisfat

Parts of North Queensland have had 2000mls of rain this week, incredible really... Many families have lost absolutely everything, looks pretty grim in places...

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/feb/04/australian-authorities-deliberately-flood-2000-queensland-homes-after-record-downpours

This didn't happen so long ago. The water then basically flowed south and flooded stuff all the way down to Victoria.

Those weather extremes are frightening. It makes me think of the line 'Of droughts and fires and floods, I've lived through plenty' from 'Now I'm Easy' by Eric Bogle. It's obviously not a new phenomenon, but anecdotally seems to be increasing in intensity (also probably partly caused by mismanagement of water resources, but not only).

This time last year it was Beast from the East, and too cold, now it's too hot. #brokenbritain #brexit

Felt like perfect cycling weather today. So nice, in February.

It was still only 5C this morning but when it 'warmed up' yes the last few days have been lovely.

It's a strange thing having tan lines in Feb as opposed to mud/road grit lines.

Seriously windy out there. Just abandoned a ride after 10 mins of nearly getting blown over.

I tried going out on my fixed gear. Small gap in a row of houses and literally got shoved to the opposite side of the road. Total ride time 45 seconds. Did an easy hour on the turbo instead.

Scotland was lovely. :)

ahhh spreadable butter once again

Has anyone else noticed these long strange periods of the wind not being in the prevailing direction?

We notice fairly quickly because we stop getting planes over our house in Clapton: normally they're coming in to land at Heathrow and taking off from City, but when the wind is 'backwards' City planes take off over the estuary and come in over south/central London to land and Heathrow flights taking off turn before they reach us. Weirdly though you can hear takeoffs from City carried by the wind, even though it's about five miles away - as well as the A12 of course - although the weaker the wind the less we hear them.

It was like this for ages earlier in the month, briefly went back to normal then yesterday reversed again.

What does it all mean? Global warming?

Every day for the last three weeks has been headwind all the way home, consistently (and annoyingly), riding roughly SE. I thought it was something to do with jet streams?

Being a bit of an airport operations nerd, this sounds pretty normal for this time of year. Perhaps it's something that you've only just noticed?