Tuesday, December 22, 2020

Snow during bicycle ride

No snow on the ground before today.  Two to three inches of snow was forecast for today.  No snow when I fed hay to the cattle this morning.  I finished by 9 am and I could see potential snow clouds to the south and west.  Instead of waiting until later to ride my bicycle I decided to ride now before the snow fell.  The ride was going well and no snow fell yet so I decided to ride a little further and do a loop.

It started to snow lightly.  No problem.  I'll keep riding the loop and not backtrack.  Then it started to snow harder.  I had 4 miles left to ride.  Then the wind direction suddenly changed so I now had a headwind.  It started to snow harder and harder... and harder.  The air was so thick with snow falling I couldn't see far off.  The wind picked up and was blowing really strong.  I had to shift to a slower gear to keep moving along.  I had to put my head down to try to keep snow out of my eyes.  The snow was piling up quickly and deeply on the road. 

I turned and now had the wind at my side and half my face was getting cold.  After a mile and a half I turned again and then had the wind at my back the rest of the way home.  The snow was getting deep on the road and there was a track or two from the few vehicles on the road and I tried to ride in one of the wheel tracks to make it easier to ride.

Once I got home I was covered in snow from head to foot.  I had ridden 13 miles, four of them in heavy snow.

It had snowed like this from the snow squall for about an hour and a half before it quit snowing and the wind quit blowing.

We have quite a few inches of snow on the ground.  More than 3 inches.  It will be a white Christmas this year.

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