Haunting Weather

Riding year after year and keeping a log of rides can help you spot connections and trends that would otherwise go unnoticed. You can measure and quantify improvements in speed and endurance, and observe yourself tackling the same routes better and better as fitness increases. In addition to time, speed (avg and max), perceived difficulty, and distance, my log includes observations about the weather on various rides, and analyzing this dimension has provided some spooky insights.

I first noticed the synchronicity on a June commuter ride home, which I happened to take on the same day (+/- for calendar shifting) three years in a row. I can remember it because, each time, a local high school has been setting up its outdoor graduation ceremonies, and they appear to be quite elaborate, with plenty of white wooden folding chairs and a big platform with a podium. Each year, the temperature and wind have been almost identical, a few degrees off in temperature either way, but it has been extremely windy, with the ride notes recording very strong headwinds. The same relative day in June, very similar temperatures, and tortuous headwinds. In fact, this ride has been noteworthy each year because these winds make it one of the harder early season efforts.

After this initial observation, I started to look more methodically across the years in my bike log, and began to notice very similar notes in the weather documentation on the same relative day more often than not -- similar temperatures, winds, and experiences.

So, as August approached this year, I felt confident about a few things. First, a two-day ride I typically do at the start of August would have beautiful weather. After all, it had been beautiful the prior two years, and I had a hypothesis! Sure enough, the weather was fabulous, perhaps even more intensely ideal than it had been the year before, with better breezes and lower humidity. Maybe this was the year of similar weather at greater intensity? My hypothesis had a corollary!

Fast-forward two weeks to a ride that had been a rainy slog at the start last year. The forecast a week beforehand was for nice weather, perhaps a light shower toward the end of the day. Foolish meteorologists! I could have predicted this a year out! Yes, you guessed it, not only did the ride start with heavy rain, the rain abated only briefly, to return colder than before, and accompanied by headwinds to help it really penetrate and chill. The Intensity Corollary was proving itself true.

And now I sit in dread, thinking that if my hypothesis is correct, the next big ride may be my undoing. Last year, it was cancelled after 80 miles due to snow on the passes and hypothermia among the leading riders. If I'm right, this year we will not only encounter snow, but famished yetis will attack and disembowel us on the slopes.

Of course, the hypothesis (and its corollary) will not stand the test of time. The sunspots will continue their 11-year cycle, and these small observations are too closely spaced to be reliable over the long term. Other, macroscopic trends are already at work to supplant them and spin them differently. But, for the year directly in front of my nose, they have proven preternaturally reliable.

So, please remember me in your prayers as the weather closes in for this last big ride of the year, and watch for a resurgent yeti population now that their food supply is about to be replenished!