Cycling in New York

Months in the band
8
Longest run
April, May, June, July, August, September, October and November
Warmest month
July, 23.7
Band used
8 to 24

Of the twelve months measured over twenty years in New York, 8 fall inside the 8 to 24 degree band used here for Cycling. The longest run of them is April, May, June, July, August, September, October and November.

The band sits higher than for running because moving air does the cooling, and wind is the one thing that costs more on a bicycle than on foot: a mean above 5.5 metres a second is a headwind half the time. Heat becomes the problem past 28 degrees.

The warmest month is July, at a mean of 23.7 degrees. The coldest is January, at 1.1.

Rain is heaviest in December, about 133 mm across the month, and lightest in February at 95 mm.

The windiest month is January, averaging 5.2 metres a second.

The figures are monthly means for New York over 2001-2020, read from one satellite reanalysis cell. The 8 to 24 degree band is a stated convention rather than a measurement, and it is the only judgement on this page.

This page says when, not where. It names no route, trail, pool, gym or club, because the dataset that holds those is not built here. There is no water temperature, no gradient and no surface in this source either, so a comfortable month is about the air and nothing else.

Cycling in New York

MonthMean temperatureRainWindIn the band
January1.199 mm5.2no
February1.495 mm5no
March4.2114 mm4.7no
April9.1107 mm4.1yes
May14.3101 mm3.5yes
June19.9115 mm3.2yes
July23.7114 mm3.2yes
August23.7114 mm3.2yes
September20.697 mm3.8yes
October14.9124 mm4.6yes
November9.3101 mm4.7yes
December4.5133 mm5no

Questions

When is the best time for cycling in New York?

The longest comfortable run is April, May, June, July, August, September, October and November, on the 8 to 24 degree band this page states. The table gives every month, so a different band can be read off it.

Does this list routes?

No. It says which months are comfortable and nothing about where to go. Routes, trails and pools need a dataset this programme has not been able to build, and inventing a route list would be worse than leaving it out.

Where do the temperatures come from?

From monthly climate normals published by NASA POWER, averaged over twenty years and read at one grid cell for the city. They are means for the whole day and month, not daytime highs.

Related pages

Sources

  • NASA POWER, https://power.larc.nasa.gov/api/temporal/climatology/point (CC BY 4.0; 'There are no restrictions on the use, access, and/or download of data from the NASA POWER Project' (AWS Open Data Registry entry))