November snow spotted!

Here's what the bikeway conditions have looked like during the last two weeks:

Snow, nice winter temperatures of maybe -10C. There was enough snow for the plowers to plow and get some piles on the sides. And kids were already sledding, of course.

Then it rained water, eww! with the temperatures a little above freezing with some black ice thrown in to make cycling and walking more interesting. Same spot as above, I couldn't be bothered to cut this picture to exactly same view.

And then it got a little colder and snowed a little. So far this snow hasn't melted away yet. The rivers and the sea has not frozen yet, and I think even small lakes do not have enough ice for kids to skate on safely. Maybe there's enough some ice fishers! :-)

English weather

We got a cloudy day, with some drizzle and mist. Very english weather. (I've never visited the UK. I've just heard it rains there all the time. And fog. :-) The trees have been covered in white frost and postcard scenes were everywhere. Now it warmed above freezing and the trees have lost the shine. Bikeways are a bit sloshy and will need the gritting once the heat wave passes.

Ice fishers do not like this weather either, as there is water on top of the ice, too. That makes harder to see if there are any holes in the ice. And it also makes walking on the ice extra exciting. :^)

I tried to get some of the fog in the picture... there are some high buildings behind the cars but they are not visible... so I guess I got the fog. Here we are salmoning safely on the bikeway. I hope the plowers find time to remove the slosh pile on the left before it freezes solid. Although with their 10 ton wheel loaders they'll be able to crack it even if freezes. The railings might get damaged in the process, though.

New Tracks

First!

Today I saw the "First Snow" of the winter. The meteorological office rules say a minimum of 1 cm of snow to qualify as "official" first snow and we had that. On centimeter is not a lot, but enough for the kids to get out the sleds! Although they noticed they didn't slide very well, the gravel beneath was not slippery. :-)

And it's enough for bikes to leave tracks. I was the first here!

Uneven melting

Last week I was driving along a rural road. I couldn't drive very fast, as the conditions were not very good.

(Here should be a photo, but the upload does not work. Use your imagination.) Edit: it worked today! :-)

Parts of the road were covered with ice, with nice four inch ruts zigzagging on the ice. On some spots the plowman had done a closer shave, and the sun had melted the ice away and revealed the soggy gravel road. The soggy gravel works like wet sand, it is soft and can drag the car to the side.

Here I am, with the car sliding a meter to the left and right on the ruts and the quicksand pits, enjoying the improved conditions on the road. Because the Summer is coming: snow is melting fast. The fields are mostly snow free, the forests still have some. Rivers will flood and the ice will float downriver this weekend.

A few days earlier, the ice on the road was a few inches thicker. Which meant that the ruts on the ice were six, even eight inches on some spots. If there had been no plowing, this road would not be driveable for a few weeks.

Results of plowing

Case 1: Three meters of smooth, gritted bikeway. The snow gets dumped in the ditch on the right. This is one of the major routes between downtown and the northern parts of the town.

Case 2: On street lane. Most of the snow has been transported away as there are no piles like in the pic above. No gritting to be seen. Ice and snow on the right. Left side of the lane might be clear asphalt or black ice. Oh, that's right, cars are riding in the bike lane and the lane marking is gone already. On the left is an entrance to the parking cave, and the drivers are afraid of crashing into the concrete. After the intersection they do not drive in the bike lane as much and the whole bike lane is full of snow.

To even things out, I cycled  along the right wheel ruts, too. :^EP

Ice removal

It's not enough to remove the snow! Well, it would be if the first vehicle on the street would be the snow plow tractor or truck also equipped with magical snow sucker to get the last flake off the ground.

But they're not. The snow gets packed into ice under the wheels (and feet) and each time it snows the ice layers get thicker and thicker. And this packing happens only where the wheels run, leaving the other areas of the street unpacked. And those unpacked areas are easy to move by plow, wind and later in the spring, by melting. Which means there will be little hills of ice and everybody will be trying to stay on top of the hills and not fall.

Today I met a big ice scraper scraping the ice hills off the street. It was followed by a wheel loader clearing the driveways. Shoveling the ice chips is not fun! They're much heavier than powder snow. :-)

Here's where the clip started

The clip in the previous post started from top of an overpass. The road below is a bit dug in, but the bridge still gives a nice boost going downhill!

I started wondering how the drivers below will like piles of snow and chunks of ice raining down on them when the snow plows clean the overpass, as there almost certainly will be some going trough the railing... then I noticed the "chicken wire" behind the railing in the upper picture. Ok, one inch pieces of ice are not so dangerous.

There's still some room to plow more snow to the side before you need to get a wheel loader (or a tractor with a front loader) to remove it.

Things I saw today, Mon 25 Nov 2013

The first interesting thing I saw today was a trailer. Someone had driven on the bikeway to drop the trailer here. (Driving on bikeways and sidewalks is not allowed without a good reason, like: it is the only route to get there.)

Whoever it was dropped some kind of ski track making machine here. I guess they expect this snow to stay... we'll see. The snow is only 5 inches deep. That's enough for the kids to take their skis and sleds out. .

And while riding downtown I heard this before I saw it. For some reason, the hydro power plant has opened some gates and is letting the water go. I guess the dam is near overflowing. But I expect the price of electricity to increase, now that the power company has to recoup the money they don't get because they have to waste the water!

White Stuff From The Sky

It's this time of the year again: Some white stuff falls from the sky, stays for a day or two and then melts again. Last Friday there had been some snow, but mostly it was more decorative than all-covering blanket. There's been some snow flakes and frozen puddles before, but either it was too dark to get photos or I didn't have my camera. No pic, no proof! :-)

Then there was supposed to be a snowstorm at night. I was a bit disappointed after all the hype in the news. No big storm here. It missed us, although there were some fallen trees around here too. Oops, sorry, those were from the storm that ripped all those leaves off the trees. The big storm  left just a few centimeters of snow. But enough for us to leave tyre tracks on it, and for the snow plow men to take their machines out for a ride.

And here's a short video clip before/after the snowfall.

200th Post: Waiting For Spring

Weather stats from the nearby station for the last 2 days. Pretty temperature curves, with the highs just above zero degrees celsius and the lows below -10°C. The daily averages would be below -5°C. Amazingly, it should be too cold for the ice to melt (or rather the puddles should freeze again) but still there is less ice on the bikeways than two weeks ago. Where does all the melt water go? It evaporates.

Weather stats from http://ilmatieteenlaitos.fi/saa/oulu

I've been taking photos of the same location for a while. The scrapes you'll se in the grass are made by the snow plows. The first photo is from 24th March:

25th March: it has snowed a little since the last photo

maybe 26th of March:

late March:

even later March:

March 30th : slosh and ruts, lovely!

April 3rd:the downhill is clear, except a little bit of 2 inch thick ice up there and lots of slosh and ruts and smooth ice to the left.

Slosh means Spring!

It isn't officially Spring yet. The Meteorological Spring in Finland starts when the 24hr average temperature climbs above +0°C. In Oulu that happens sometime mid-April. Right now, when the nights are -15°C or -10°C, just a few hours above freezing in the afternoon are not enough to bring the average up.

There are some signs of Spring even on the bikeway. On sunny spots there's some slosh. And there's even the odd puddle here and there.  And where the snow plow men kept the plow too tightly on the ground there are some patches of brown, dead grass visible.

The snow plow men have been busy scraping the extra ice off, and pushing the snow banks further away from the bikeways. Look at the photo below: the snow banks is more than a meter away from the edge of the asphalt. The meltwaters hopefully will sink into groundwater instead of making puddles on the bikeway. Of course, the ground is frozen solid so it'll be a while until the water can sink anywhere.

I read on the newspaper the other day about several cars driving into the ditch because the snow plow men had lost the road under the ice and snow and just plowed somewhere where they thought the road might be. The end result was that the "plowed road" was partially over a ditch...

Snow banks pushed away.

Here's what a street looks like after Ice Scrapers have scraped the ice off. There were some parked cars so they couldn't scrape everywhere. The ice left on the street is about 20cm thick, and the chunks on the pile are mostly 5cm thick with a few 10+cm pieces thrown in.

Higher And Higher

The ice layer on the street gets higher than the sidewalk next to it. And if I recall correctly, the kerb stone was pretty high on this street. A new ice age in the making?

Here's what the temperature curve looks like on a nearby weather station. From the low of -25C, the temperature as been getting higher and higher, almost reaching -5C today. Just ignore the sharp drop at the end and we have a good hockey stick curve to prove the climate is heating up! 10 degrees in the 12 last hours, and if the rate keeps true we'll reach boiling point in a week. Forecast -22C for the night and -10C for tomorrow. Pretty typical March weather.

This isn't a good curve to show the power of the sun, but I'll try to remember to take a screenshot of one of those cold night and warm days (-20C to +0C) later on. In April, maybe.

There was some snow

Today there was some snow on the bikeways. And the snowplows were also there, I happened to ride behind one for a little bit. The conditions were fine, except the snow that is : a few degrees below freezing and not very windy.

Just a few hours later the sky is clear. And the wind has changed direction, blowing from the north (12m/s) so I got a head wind again. :-/

I've loaded a few videos without a blog post, so if you just check the blog you might have missed them. But they're boring so don't worry!

A difficult photoshoot

Last night i was on my way when I spotted something interesting and I wanted to take a photo of it. That turned out to be pretty hard, but I'm posting the best shots here. As I suspected last night, I wasn't able to get a photo of it today because there was a bit of fresh snow.

Here's a generic view: a bikeway through the woods, after 2100hrs (9 pm). The only light is from the streetlights above. Obviously the dynamo lamp does not give any light when stopped and the see-me led light does not give enough to be any use.

Another shot, from a crouched position.  A bit closer to the object of interest, but still not obvious what I'm trying to shoot.

And for some reason my thigh muscles cramped when I got up. Looks like stretching is dangerous! :-P

Here's a shot taken from the surface of the moon... or the bikeway from above. The object is clearly visible, but otherwise the photo is pretty boring.

And what do these photos show us? A lump of snow on the snowy bikeway? Exactly! We're having a heat wave and the temperatures have been above freezing (+1C or +2C). That means that the trees are shedding the snow, and when the bikeway goes near trees they will get their share.

Now, a lump of somewhat fluffy wet snow falls a few meters. What happens when it impacts the ground? It won't be so fluffy anymore. And when it freezes, we have a pot-hill, a pothole in reverse.  Inch  or two high hills made of ice. Very nice!

I thought it would drop below freezing during the night, but it didn't. And it looks like the temperature will be around freezing (-2 to +1) until Friday, and there will be snow and sleet, too. That means the lumps will not survive very long, as the warm weather prevents them from freezing properly and the snow means the snow plows will be around to clean the bikeways.

Afternoon ride

Last week there was some days with a snowfall. Like Saturday, which brought 10 or 15 cm of fresh white snow. In the afternoon the weather had cleared, and as I was riding to get some milk I got the camera out of my pocket and switched it to video mode and started filming.

I chose a route (to view something new) that I don't take very often, even if it feels a bit shorter. The shortcut has it's own problems: two street crossings (with kerbs), a tight 90 degree turn, and I'm not sure it's even any shorter. On the other hand, the longer route has long stretches of straight bikeways with only one street to cross. Maybe it's the long straights make it feel longer? On the short cut route I can only ride 100 meters ahead before turning again.

Not everywhere had been plowed yet. I had to hold the camera with one hand while on the street, and the other hand was busy on the handle bar to keep me upright. The cars tracks made a layer of half-packed snow which cracked under the front wheel so I was slipping left and right. If I'd had a camera on the handle bar, it'd shown more of the sides than straight ahead! :-)

First Snow Videos

Here they are. The first one shows the skateboarding ramps are empty. Those tiny wheels do not work well in two inches of snow! <evil grin:->

The other is shows a real life braking test on a snowy bikeway. Not really icy yet because the snow hasn't been trampled on enough, but there was some ice on it anyway. The big trucks do not have studded tyres so they're  pushing the limit a bit by stopping at a steep hill. I'd say they couldn't have fit trough the underpass, so they would been stuck if they couldn't get up. They could have turned left or right but came up straight, and afterwards I was wondering if they turned back or drove through the no entry signs to the pedestrian crossing to get to the street at the very beginning of the video.

Note the mail van, it's a special, expensive vehicle designed for mail delivery ie. right hand drive so the mailman can reach the boxes :-)

The last of the videos I uploaded is sort of a video response to  bicycledutch's cycling past red lights blog post. The Dutch with their bikeways segregated from the road  often get to ignore the traffic lights. In T-junctions and when doing right turns there often is no conflict with other road users so why should a cyclist be penalized by a red light. This (cycling past red lights) is common in Very Northern Florida too.

Some commenter talked about the aversion to two-phase left turns: having to first cross one street and then wait at another red light certainly is a pain. Even if you don't have dutch intersections, if you have paths on both sides of the street you can cross the street when ever it's best for you and then make the left turn at will.

Riding on the needles

I was asked in the youtube comments if all the leaves had fallen yet. Not quite all, but most of them. And a lot of needles by these weird spruces.

Here's a clip I put together from my rides yesterday and today. As you can see, it is very much like autumn: ice on the ground and falling leaves and so on. It gets below freezing during the night but usually thaws during the day, so there isn't any snow or ice. Except I did find some for the video yesterday because the day was so cold it hadn't all melted away.

And today was windy, and the Oulu River had waves on it. Usually the river is almost as smooth as glass but today I certainly wouldn't want to go out there in a row boat!

Oh, I haven't heard by old bike so I got a single speed bike for cheap. Seems that Oulu isn't quite that flat as I thought when I had gears in my bike. Maybe I should get hub gears for it.

It's a sit-up bike, with a rack which I like. On the other hand it had flat tyres, the rear axle needed tightening (the ball bearings were about to fall off, typical of some discount stores which don't know how to assemble the bikes properly) and it has no lights which are needed this time of the year. And mandatory, too. So it's taken me a few days of fixing and tuning to get it up.

For the lights I've had to hold a lamp in my hand but I got the 'see me' led light system ready, now I've just got to install it. I took an old bike light, sawed it a bit and put a bunch of leds inside. With a bulb it took 250 mA, with leds I can run it less than 20mA and it's still visible. As it has a reflector in the middle of the lens and light goes everywhere it's not really good light for seeing in the dark.

The other light project, modifying a head lamp with a 3w led to work as a 'see far' bike light is still in the works. At least now I got the solder and other gear on the table so I might actually work on it a bit.

I was going to take some photos of the rear axle while I was cleaning it and stuff, but after I took the first photo and did some work on the bike my hands got dirty and I couldn't take more photos. You'd' have to  see the bike as it was to see what I mean. Even the chain was so gunky it was doubled in size. And I didn't have any bensin or diesel to soak the chain so I had to scrub it by hand. Any soaps I had didn't work on the gunk and I didn't have the mechanics hand scrub soap like some other blogger used recently (who was it?). So in the end I used veggie oil and it seemed to work almost fine. And it's environmentally friendly. :-P

Now I just have to get these black grease stains out of tables, door handles, floors...

Picture of the day

This is what it looked like in the morning. First snow of the winter. It was still snowing so it looked very promising when I took the photo. A little snow on the ground would make the world a lighter place.

Isn't it pretty? Green grass, white snow and orange trees?

And then, fifteen minutes later the rain changed to sleet and then into water and the snow was gone.

Pictures from week 12/2012

The first two are from a few days back. In the first pic, the slosh has been plowed to the sides on the bikeway, making it a good ride.

Not so on the streets.

These are from today. Now you can find benches to sit on the river side trail, they're not buried in snow any more. On the north side of the river, there's no shadow except a few trees, so the snow will melt here fast. Note the muddy patch ahead and how all tracks go around to avoid it. The ground is still frozen and will not let water through. So when the snow melts, the soil get sun too and will melt for a few inches. And water plus soil plus people moving on it means it'll be muddy.

The path is on the right side of the river on this photo. For some reason there's no ice on the right, maybe because the curve of the river causes faster or more turbulent currents. A few days ago there was an article in the newspaper telling people to not go on the ice here...

There's so much gritting sand in places it's almost like a sandy path. Now one has to be careful in curves and while turning, this time it's because of the sand instead of the ice.

This was on the south side of the river. Where the path was shadowed by high buildings there was ice, otherwise the path was rapidly losing the ice. Behind one of the trees was a speed display. I don't often ride this path (or drive the street), at least in this direction so I don't know if it's been there long. I think the street has 50km/h limit.

What's really fun is that it gives speeds for cyclists too. I'm not sure if it has loops on the ground or if it has laser or something, but it didn't give speed to a pedestrian walking by. Maybe she was too slow. It worked for the cyclists even though I was standing in front of it with a camera.

It's not a good spot to make speed records, as there's an intersection ahead and several paths from the park on the right merging with this one. But if you want to check your speedometer, this can be handy.

Snow and puddles

Two days ago: snowed a little. The previous sunny days are just a memory and streets and bikeways have ice and snow everywhere, like they used to just a few days ago. Nice tyre tracks on the crossing!

Yesterday: what fresh snow? The sun has melted it all. And the melt waters make ice softer and easier to melt.

I guess warm weather gets under the bridge and makes the snow melt faster. And there's no shadows, either. Almost ice free already.

Just wait until this freezes again!

Look, what a great job: she gets to play in the puddles and gets paid for it. Sounds like a dream job. If you ignore that the water is near freezing, that is.

On the right: nice, icy, slippery bikeway.

Oh, see how the puddle is almost to the center line? Well, a car driver decided he didn't want to go all the way to the oncoming lane. The results were just what you expect, she got splashed. I think it was lucky the car went out of her reach. If the look she gave was any clue, she would have happily used the iron bar on the car. So maybe it isn't so great job after all.

In some places it's going to be a while before the ice melts. Here it hasn't even started yet.

Ah, what a nice mirror smooth patch of ice that will be. Meltwater dripping/ running down to an underpass.

Late last nigh it snowed again, but not a lot. The conditions on the bikeways vary a lot. Some are melting, some not. I even had the video camera on the bike today, but for some reason the camera has started vibrating on the bracket again and the footage is no good. But as the days are sunny, I'll have plenty of chances to try again. I'm sure someday I'll get the camera attached properly.

A bikeway next to an arterial on the far right.