Just as Dylan famously sang so long ago, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” I don’t need a thermometer to know the temperature – or at least what to wear when I venture outside for fun.

If the rhododendron leaves are curled up as tightly as a window shade, fresh ice has formed on the pond and pine boughs whistle and bend in a stiff breeze I know it’s time to ditch my light jacket and fleece gloves and slip on an expedition parka and mitts that can keep me toasty at 20 below.

If snow is flying, as it has several mornings earlier this week, I also slip on a balaclava. So far in this relatively benign season I’ve only had to wear a lightweight model – it has to be seriously cold, well below zero in near-blizzard conditions, to require heavyweight head covering.

And it has to be a truly epic storm to skip the morning run, which is as much a social gathering among a friends and neighbors as it is exercise. Nobody wants to be the one who wimps out.

A number of years ago I played the “My pipes were frozen and I had to crawl under the house with a hairdryer” card when I didn’t show up for a scheduled group jaunt, and for months afterward, well into spring, I had to endure taunts from my hard-core confreres: “Hey, those pipes thawed out yet?”

Anyway, the other morning it was bitter cold when I crossed paths with fellow runner Laura Ely, decked out in several layers of polypropylene, a wool hat and springy traction devices strapped to her shoes to provide stability on slushy, icy roads.

Horizontal snow stung our eyes when we turned upwind after a couple miles. Shoulda put on goggles.

The forecast for this coming weekend calls for sub-zero temps and even more savage winds.

“Do you have a temperature threshold?” Laura asked.

“Yeah. Ninety degrees. I’d rather run at 30 below than 95,” I replied.

We’ve endured a lot worse. Almost exactly five years ago, I joined Laura, her husband, Rick and a few other friends on a cross-country ski trip to Zealand Hut, nestled nearly a mile high in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The wind and temperature that weekend made this week’s big chill seem like Equatorial Africa in August.

My most vivid memory of that weekend involved a hellish attempt to lug an overloaded sled up the final quarter-mile to the hut -- for some mistaken reason I thought it would be more efficient than carrying gear in a backpack -- and shivering in my sleeping bag in the unheated bunk room. Fun.

Cold as I was, it wasn’t nearly as frigid as the time I camped out in February on Camel’s Hump in Vermont, and discovered that the water bottle I had stashed inside my sleeping bag at night had frozen solid. Or the time friends and I scaled Mt. Washington in a blizzard – 20 below air temps, 80 mph winds, zero visibility. Or the time I sledded down the Mt. Washington Auto Road in the company of crazy meteorologists from the Weather Observatory who neglected to tell me I should have worn a face mask. Or a week I spent, mostly alone as a winter caretaker at Gray Knob hut on Mount Adams, when the indoor temperature rarely topped the 20s. Or the week two fellow climbers and I hunkered down in a two-man tent at 19,000 feet in the Andes while the wind roared and temperature plunged. Or the winter week I spent visiting friends in Wisconsin, when I devised The Fagin Coldness Scale, modeled after the Beaufort Wind Scale that measures frigidity on empirical phenomena rather than simple numbers.

Number 9 or 10, I seem to remember, was eyelids freezing shut. So far this winter I haven’t had that experience.

After last winter’s relentless assault, we can’t whine about a short return of the polar vortex.

This Saturday I’m planning to join a few dozen diehard friends for a group run in Preston. No excuses.

I’m reminded of a joke about golfers that can be readily adapted to runners, kayakers, hikers and all others who embrace the great outdoors.

These two friends meet for 18 holes on a savagely nasty day: sleet, howling winds, icicles hanging off their hats.

Shivering back at the clubhouse, they change into dry clothes and head out the door to the parking lot.

“Same time next week?” one asks.

“Yup. Weather permitting.”