January and February we get occasional windows of rideable weather.
Come March, things bounce between cold, wet and nasty, and drop-dead gorgeous, and finally gorgeous wins sometime in April and sticks around until early June. Then in comes muggy and sweltering!
Of course, that's if we don't have a major flood in the spring.
As for knowing when you can put the snow shovels, heavy coats and gloves away, you just have to read the newspaper. Once they report recovery of the winter drowning victims' bodies that are bobbing to the surface of the Mississippi, the cold is gone till late November or mid-December.
Yeah, it's kind of gruesome, but reliable. It has to do with the river warming up enough for decomposition to occur. That produces gas, and the bodies are, as in life, lighter than water.
Nothing -- absolutely nothing -- is decomposing under all that ice!
Really cold water is the source of the line "Superior it's said never gives up her dead when the gales of November blow early" in the Gordon Lightfoot song.
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