Weather

Anyone who rides their bike outside much seems to eventually wind up following the weather, and more so than just looking at the temperature outside and if anything is falling out of the sky.

One of the college kids last week planned a ride, in the middle of a predicted storm.  And not a short wee little bit of rain or snow.  No, that big last one.  Two days out we knew the day was at least going to be windy, and given the temperature and possible storm tracks we were either going to have lots of wet snow, lots of rain, or something in between, with crazy strong wind for the whole day.

Planning a group ride is good.  Group rides are good social things.  They can also be like the Angry Man's ride.  They are not a bad thing in general.  I like group rides, more because I rarely get to do them and I always invariably am riding with people I genuinely like to spend time with.  Sometimes I'm the strongest on the ride, some times I'm the first in danger of being dropped.

Wednesday Night Smackdowns start tomorrow.  Baby smackdown, Wed Night Leg Waster, Prov Velo Club ride.  Call it what you want.  5pm Waterman Grille Circle in PVD, ~25 mile ride with a few hills, a couple sprint points (top of Pine, Rocky Hill, Hillside) and some good tempo sections mixed in.

Back last week looking forward to the time change (not really, I like waking up when it is light out, i guess that will change soon enough) there was some discussion about which day do we run the ride.  Tuesday is the traditional Mark Nicholson Smack Down ride.  We moved the short ride to Wed mid-season.  Wed has the ninigret conflict but I can't get to ninigret mid-week except for weird rare circumstances.  Just doesn't happen for me so the conflict only exists for those w/o constraints 

I asked for feedback and preferences, and as can be expected there was equal amounts of "I can't do it on" either day.  Can't please everyone.  Derdowski and Fox were the most regular and Fox lead the ride a few times I couldn't and the three of us all figured Wednesday would work better.

But Sunday looking at the forecast, well, that's easy.  I don't want to do a high speed drafting ride in pouring rain.  Hell who knows what kind of pot holes are out there right now.  Rain on Tuesday peak probability/intensity right around 5pm.

Wednesday it is. And will be.

Round about rambling to get to this point though.

The point and the 'inspiration' for this was riding in thinking about my current weather forecasting tools.

This works for me, there are plenty good options, some people like how pretty weather spark is (i've used it in the past but keep coming back to current set). So yeah... this is what i check, maybe it works for you, but everyone is different, which is kind of nice, what works for me probably doesn't work for you but it isn't going to stop me from talking about it.

NOAA graphics loaded with information and on the whole pretty damn accurate.  It does change and you can only go out so far in the future.  But it works really well for the information I process when preparing for a ride or for a commute.

For current conditions I like the weather stations on WUnderground (I turn off everything except Weather stations - sometimes I'll fire up the radar to see where the rain is and the timing)

Sometimes I'll hit weather dot com for the radar but usually for volume and rapid digestion of information I hit those two above.

Instant read the Wunderground stations and wind directions are very good indicators for me, really mostly about the commute, click to check temps what layers do i need, will i be fighting a headwind?

Weather.

We're out in it.  Being prepared is part of riding.  One can get really tired of accidental 'epic' weather rides.  There's only room in personal experience for so many fuck ups that get turned into fun.

Gonna be a wet headwind tonight.  Not a problem 'cause, I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay...

heddwch
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