my sign is vital / my hands are cold

[blk]

I must state as a point of pride that I feel I've successfully learned how to dress comfortably for Pittsburgh cold weather. Pride because I grew up as a native Floridian, where temps in the 50s (F) were considered ungodly cold, and I didn't own a "winter jacket" until I got to college. Also, my skin is thin and uninsulated with occasional poor

Comments

[totient]

apart from the pogies, I find that just having a handlebar bag gives me someplace to keep my hands out of the wind but still on the brakes (I use crosstop levers, so they're pretty far in toward the center).

[bhudson]

I have never heard of pogies, but MEC says they're for riding in "Iqualuit, Moncton, or Montreal" -- so maybe I should get some, given I'm at risk of riding in two of those three places.

I wear arm warmers that go from the middle of my forearm to the middle of my hand (they're supposed to be longer, but as with most things, they assume people get fatter when they get taller, so I have to get smalls). That helps a lot with keeping draft from cooling my wrists, which is the primary reason my fingers get cold: wrists are cold -> blood vessels constrict -> fingers are cut off from blood flow.

But my fingers still get chilly.

[jacquez]

I would say (speaking as someone with chronically cold hands who runs in cold weather) that the wrist thing is key. Unless the wrists are very well-warmed, whatever you are putting over the fingers is a Band-aid at best. Warm wrists won't do everything, but if you don't have them, you're boned.

[blk]

I'm pretty sure I have the wrist thing well covered. As in, my jackets go down to my wrist and my gloves come over my jacket, and both ends cinch on top of each other, and everything down to my fingertips FEELS totally warm. I suppose I do have wrist warmers that I could try out, though, to see if they make a difference.

[chamois]

For cold weather, I always suggest mittens, but you ruled that out.

On my motorcycle, I have successfully used poggies and snowmobile gloves. There I am fighting wind chill more than absolute temperatures. The snowmobile gloves are gantlet style which is nice.

[talldean]

Pogies on a motorcycle are generally branded as Hippo Hands, and work for motorcyclists, in the winter, in Alaska.

The other solution is generally heated gloves, often made by Gerbings. They are, as you implied, painfully expensive; $200ish for gloves, $100-200 for either a controller to plug them into a battery at less than full heat, and/or $100-200 for a battery.

That said, my Mountain Hardware ski gloves are remarkably, crushingly warmer than the Novartis gloves I owned, which seemed to be designed in Northern California for their idea of "cold". Waterproof? check. Windproof? check. We're now done here.

Leave the biking section and walk over to skis/snowboards, and you still stay under $100 for warm. Or make hippo hands, and be warmer still for under $50.

[ef2p]

Mittens!!!!! Heat loss is equal to the difference in temperature time thes surface area divided my the quality of insulation. When each finger has it's own covering you have lots of surface area. By putting the four fingers together you have much less surface area. The US Military makes three fingered gloves (thumb, index and the rest of them) so you can stay warm and still pull the trigger.

Also what type of gloves are you wearing? Something that acts as a wind break will help a whole lot.

[blk]

Three fingered gloves sound kinda cool... my gloves are Novara Stratus as mentioned above, which are 2-1-1, and are excellent windbreakers. My pinky stays much warmer but my thumb still goes numb. Full mittens are probably not likely due to above explanation.