Well, my general idea of when to prune things is usually just as they start into growth, so you can remove all dead limbs. If you prune before that, you may lose additional limbs.

Bart, though your climate is a little milder than ours, I'ld wait till there is no more risk of severe frosts, which would give you some die-back that you can't prune away anymore. I guess by the mid of February you'll be safe to prune. Over here I need to wait till the first week of March.

When my gardening gloves can't keep my hands warm! Again, it's not the current temperature, it's the timing. you can prune now, but if it gets warm and the roses break dormancy (stirred by the pruning) and then you get another cold snap, you can lost all the new growth and possibly damage the remaining growth.

Thanks, all! See, here the climate is so different! I have roses that are in bloom now; they never really go totally dormant, really. A lot of times, pruning seems to serve the opposite purpose of the conventional idea of it stimulating new growth, almost,since it helps defoliate them. Actually, I think they tend to be closest to real dormancy during the summer drought than at any other time of year; once (if) it starts raining in the fall, they start growing. The old adage quoted so often "prune when the forsithia are in bloom",is total nonsense in this climate: by that time the roses are usually leafing out already. To give an idea: even now, I've got a little basal break coming up on a Mt. Vernon Purple Noisette...Basically, I've always stuck to a different adage, which says that, in warm climates like mine,all major pruning on roses should be done by Valentine's Day; I've already pruned several of them, back in December . I guess what I'm worrying about is having a result similar to that which I had years ago, when I summer pruned: due to the lack of water and the heat, I got tons of die-back. But if what Buford says is true, that it's not the current temperature that really matters,I guess I'd be ok. Honestly, here it's more the summer heat that seems to be the enemy of roses,since IME when it's extremely hot out, pruning is a very bad idea...

I'm with dbarron. I wait until I can see some tiny bit of growth starting. That way I can tell more easily what is really dead wood and what is still viable.