ORH_wxman

There’s a ton of money at stake in keeping the narrative about college going. Encouraging everyone to take out government guaranteed loans has been one of the biggest windfalls ever for colleges in the past couple decades. They don’t have to worry about any of those loans getting repaid since they are guaranteed...all up front money for them. Zero incentive to make tuition more affordable. When we were discussing the narrative in the 1980s/1990s earlier, another aspect back then was that college was more affordable than now...even when taking account for all other inflation.

I literally watched that 500mb loop at about the 7:30 mark at least 10 times. That is such an epic progression. Still haven’t seen one match ‘78 yet. Some honorable mentions with Dec ‘92, Apr ‘97, and Mar 2001 but they can’t quite match the big daddy.

Yep. Need a lot more Mike Rowes going around. There’s a lot of very good careers waiting and many of these skilled trade also open avenues for entrepreneurship which has been on the decline in the US for 30 years. Part of the problem is that people like Rowe then get attacked for being “anti-education”...which is obviously a nasty smear tactic. There’s plenty of room for both. College isn’t for everyone. Having more people go into trades would actually incentivize colleges to lower their tuitions too or at least stop the obscene inflation in tuition.

We usually reserved that one for the Harvard or Yale snobs. Cornell was the “ditch digger” of Ivy Leagues.

How is that not an onion article. You definitely have to worry about coronavirus spreading outdoors in high winds at 29,000 feet.

Engineering as a whole was hit pretty hard in the recession...not a total shock as a lot of construction projects and plans halted. It may have played a role though in lower engineering degree numbers in the subsequent years. There's been a pretty big increase in the number of natural sciences degrees though. Again, these things will probably ebb and flow as people adjust to the demand and pay incentives. Skilled trades are on the way up again but still have a long way to go to meet demand....so we'll probably see a relative boom there over the next decade or so. Engineering will prob come up again some as job prospects for them become more and more attractive with the current shortage. It definitely does suck for a lot of these students who had to make decisions about a career in that recession and post-recession period. It probably cost them hundreds of thousands (if not more) in career earnings coming into the job market at the wrong time.

Also be aware of the volatility....these aren't like high liquidity blue chip stocks. There are whales that can move this 20% or more. This is basically gambling....sure, there's some upside, but always understand the risk and volatility and your bankroll.

There was a joke at Cornell that the "Hotel-ies" (as they were called) were the dumbest kids there but would be making the most money once graduated. One kid I know a couple doors down from freshmen year was hired as a manager at Four Seasons right out of school....nice gig for a 22-23 year old.

Your generation also got into the job market at the worst time....anyone trying to get in during that 2008-2015 period really got screwed. Bad recession and slow recovery. College is still a good investment on the whole (esp for the STEM fields), but it's not for everyone and shouldn't be.

That is excellent. I love the old school radio broadcast in the background.

Yes this is true....and a lot of that has to do with networking and opportunity through those schools. I went to an Ivy League so I know a lot of the types you are talking about. They do some school-sponsored internship at some prestigious company and then they are in. A lot of these companies basically try to set up pipelines from those extreme top end schools even if they don't publicly admit it. If that opportunity fails for the ivy league grad, they have plenty of acquaintances from their college who can get them in somewhere too.

He'd be better off putting all 5k on red at the roulette wheel at Oxford Casino than his lawn.

Biology is a STEM degree so it's definitely going to be useful and offer good job/income opportunities.

An interesting variable too is the percent of degrees that each field made up the total back then. Like in the 1980s, engineering degrees were a higher percent of bachelor degrees than now and psychology/sociology degrees were a lower percent. Engineering is a far more lucrative field than many other types of degrees, so there was some incentive to get those degrees. The pay gap was also larger back then for college degrees and skilled trades, but that has been reversing quickly in recent years. The lack of skilled tradesmen is driving up the income potential in that sector.

Incentives will eventually shift the narrative but sometimes it takes a while. The stigma of the skilled trades runs deep from the 1980s/1990s....our generation remembers it well. "You don't want to end up as a plumber, do you??!". Who's laughing now...the plumber pulling in 6 figures with little/no debt or the barista who has a bachelor of arts degree with 6 figures of debt? Mike Rowe (The Dirty Jobs dude on Discovery channel for those who don't know) has been a good force in advocating and making visible the benefits of going the skilled trade routes. He goes around and talks to high school students all the time. It's starting to reduce the stigma of not going to a 4 year college.

Record low maxes have become more frequent at ORH in the past 20 years versus the previous 20 (there were 67 record low maxes at ORH 2000-2020 but only 57 in the 1980s/1990s)....but so have both record high mins and record high maxes. The record low minimums have seen the biggest dropoff.

Keep in mind that those early ASOS precip buckets were sometimes a total catastrophe in snowstorms. I think ORH has some sizable storms in those first several years of ASOS that were like 30 to 1...total joke. The second April ‘96 storm was pretty sizable so BDL prob got at least 5-6” in that one alone. The first one was smaller but 8”+ from those two storms seems totally reasonable to me.

I think so? Maybe Ryan has more insight....I am pretty sure that BDL had in the 115" range in 1995-1996 and not 106.9. Not a massive error if that is the case, but you still want to get the record correct. edit: I can already see at least one error for that season. They have 0.0" for April 1996 which is not correct.

Yeah, i mean, climate modeling is kind of a tough science anyway....there is a huge ensemble of them out there. You can probably find a few that will verify on any given parameter. Something like "oh, 80% of these model predicted a decrease in snowfall but a few of them actually predicted an increase". Some of it is probably the unique geography too. You already know this, but New England sticks out into the ocean like a chin and there is a natural strong baroclinic zone to the south of us because of that....which is enhanced even greater by the gulf stream veering off to the east south of the benchmark. Add in the Appalachian mountains to the west which entrenches CAD cold domes and it creates sort of this zone that is not going to be affected as much by small deviations in the polar jet as a place off to the west....say, the midwest. The storm systems are still going to want to respond to that natural baroclinic zone and CAD dome and commonly try to move south of us. Add 1C to the temps on the cold side of these system due to climate warming? Won't do much in New England....it gives us a snow with -4C 850 temps instead of -5C. Eventually, warming would start to erode these more marginal episodes as you say....but that could take a while given the geography/topography of the region.

This was true of more arctic and sub-arctic regions but it wasn't modeled well for places like New England (sans maybe NNE mountains).....there are still latest-generation climate models that predict a 50-70% decline in snowfall for our area between 2010-2040....doesn't pass the smell test. Not that climate models are overly reliable on a regional scale anyway. They tend to perform much better on the global scale. BTW, I agree with you on what is going on though. Increased water vapor should lead to more snow given the nature of the warming going on (it is not fast enough to offset the precip increase, and more of the warming if occurring during overnight clear nights than at other times).

2015 adds about 2 inches to the BOS average. That is a lot of influence for one season. That said, it would still be up around 47.1 or 47.2 if you removed 2015, so it is still a pretty obscene 30 years compared to historical BOS even if you take out 2015.

Man, BOS is going to be in for a lot of below average snowfall seasons with a 49.1" average now....get ready for all the news stories about climate change depleting their snowfall (while ignoring that it went up like 8 inches between the 1961-1990 and 1991-2020 norms)

Nevermind, just found them on the BOX facebook page. BOS 49.2" (!!) ORH 72.9" BDL 51.7" PVD: 36.6"

Do you have a link to the new climate normals? Was going to check ORH snow, but can't seem to find them. Their normals for snowfall will still be contaminated by the late 1990s/early 2000s, but it will still be interesting to see the change.

We almost didn't even test him...the only reason we did is because there had been a case at his daycare like 8-10 days earlier and even though he tested negative a few days after that case, we figured maybe it was still in incubation period or something, so we tested him again when he was complaining of not feeling great and he had a really low grade fever (like around 100F) and a mild headache. Sure enough, it comes back positive. Yeah my younger son never caught it from his older brother despite being all over him the whole time they were quarantined at home. Seems like it must take a pretty big viral load to get kids infected...esp toddlers.