Re-thinking the rain check

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The winteriest weather yet – in an already cold year – is set to be a challenge this week. We probably won’t ride in snow (unless you live above 700m in Tas, Vic or NSW) but riders in southeastern Australia will shiver in showers and temperatures forecast to be 5 degrees below average. Dressing smart is key, which we covered last week in Master the weather, and then we just need to keep perspective and realise these conditions won’t last forever. In fact, when you think statistically, if the rain we endure now uses up the quota that is the monthly average then we’ll have dry riding for the rest of the month!

Snowfall
Image from World Streets

Here’s a table of the average rain days in Australia’s state and territory capital cities.

Rain days in June
Perth 12.7
Adelaide 11.2
Sydney 7.4
Hobart 7.2
Melbourne 7
Canberra 5.5
Brisbane 5.3
Darwin 0.4

It’s tough news for Perth and Adelaide riders – and no news for Darwin riders – but for the rest of us there’s less precipitation in our immediate future than we probably realised.

It’s also doesn’t rain as constantly on a “rainy” day as we might think . Sure, sometimes it buckets down just when you’re riding off but most often it rains when you’re not in transit. If it’s raining when I’m ready to ride home, I just wait ten minutes and I find it has usually eased off by that time.

It’s a good time for a refresher course on maintaining traction in the wet.

This post was for day seven of Ride On‘s June riding challenge.

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