Mother Nature is BiPolar and Off her Medication!

OK, I admit I stole that title from a meme I saw on Facebook! But I'm convinced it is true. The weather this year has been all over the place. In my last post on the Festive 500, I talked about having all the seasons in one week. We started out with mild temperatures where knees and elbows were exposed. Throughout the week it got colder, then it rained and finally it snowed. Well, this pattern has repeated itself throughout the winter and into spring. Over the past few months, we've had some amazingly mild days as well as a short spell of days below 0 Fahrenheit! BiPolar!

It seems that every day the weather is dramatically different from the day before. In the span of a week I go from deep winter boots to ventilated summer shoes. It is the same with gloves and hats. Our mudroom is filled with clothing for every season. It's just been crazy this year. I've used my entire wardrobe in one week.

Bare hands and medium shoes one day

Heavy gloves, boots and jacket the next

Well almost the entire wardrobe... Sadly the one pair of shoes I didn't manage to use this year was my cross country ski boots. Since we kept getting mild/warm days right after cold/snowy days, we never got enough snow base to get out on x-c skis.


Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining about lack of heavy snow cover. Last year's record snow fall changed our lives, literally. It was nice not to have to rake the roof and worry about ice dams or where to pile the snow that we shoveled off the driveway and sidewalks. And it was nice to be able to get out and ride regularly, even if it meant constantly checking the forecast and carrying extra gear or starting out with loads of layers and an empty saddlebag for stashing stuff when I overdressed. In a normal year, if I am too cold or too warm on a ride one day, I can just tweak the wardrobe slightly the next day. But this year, the next day was often dramatically different from day to day and making the adjustment was challenging.  

Then there was that 80F day in March when this happened!

Then spring officially arrived and we had our biggest single snowfall two weeks later on April 4. We recorded the lowest April temperature in 50 years the day after. Yet I had been riding in shorts just a few days before.

Now flowers are starting to bloom and bits of green are starting to be visible in the trees. Warmer weather will arrive and stick around for more than a day. Hopefully!

Looking forward to needing to refill water bottles more often!