Heading into Arctic blast

It's the last day of January, and in a month this winter has turned completely. Commuting has been very nice lately. Temperatures have been around -10°C or slightly colder. This morning the temperature was -15°C and it's getting colder as this week progresses. Yesterday morning -35°C was recorded in Eastern Finland. It's the very cold arctic air mass that is coming from Siberia, and air pressure has been almost record high at slightly over 1060 hPa. In the end of the week, -28°C morning temperature is forecasted so it will be interesting...

A bucket of photos from the previous and this week here. I'm repeating the same theme here but when it is this nice, I think it's good repeating...































Photo album links: Picasa and Google+.

The next weekend will be very interesting. Peter and I will do a slightly longer special overnighter. All the details will be revealed afterwards. The night will be surely cold and it will be excellent chance to test my cold night sleeping skills.

Blissful commuting week

This week was a fabulous commuting week. More snow.

Tuesday 17th:

This week I used more the alternative routes:

Thursday 19th. Even more snow. In the morning all the roads were unplowed. Hard but fantastic going!

In the afternoon yet another route, Oinila:

Friday 20th. A half work day.

And the blissfulness will continue, the 10-day weather forecast looks very good:

All Condition Commuting

This week (2/2012) has seen all kind of conditions on my commutes. Here is a recap of the entire week.

Monday 9th. It was a beautiful and cold day, -10°C. A nice sunset...





...but the rise of the full moon was really jawdropping!



I wasn't satisfied with the moonrise photos, so I went out again in the evening:





Tuesday 10th was nice too. I really liked to mood of the afternoon:







Wednesday 11th. Getting worse, slush and sleet:



Thursday 12th. +1°C, rain, ice and water all over the place. A nightmare without studs. The trick to survive this was to ride as much as possible on the edges of the roads:







Friday 13th. Back to below freezing. I took a little fall on the morning commute, fortunately nothing too serious. I got full reward in the afternoon! -3°C and nearly blizzard conditions!











The snow did riding much easier and better, althought there were of course a couple of sketchy icy sections. The wind was stormy and from the north. I took this little video to capture the brilliant atmosphere:

The weather forecasts looks for subzero temperatures at least the next 10 days ahead, and more snow. But I need to hurry with my studding project with the Surly Nates, falling is never fun.

Winter paradise afternoon

Sunday afternoon, -11°C, snow and sun outside, an opportunity to go out and ride... it's paradise!



The past week had already some good signs of winter, but now things looks even better. Much better. The temperature is forecasted to stay below 0°C, and longer GFS forecasts looks for even colder temps. We could reach -20°C and below after next week.







The beauty of freezing:







I went to check out my trail version of the commute route. Fallen trees were expected because of the storms, but compared to Alttarvaha, this was much worse. There were only short open sections and lots of fallen trees, everywhere. You had to be a goat to go anywhere.













Bike pushing was very difficult.
Finally a relief as the trail to the field was open:





The sunset and the full moon were awesome:









A true pleasure today.





The slideshow links: Picasa Web Albums and Google+.