powderfreak

I didn’t see anyone arguing it’s a good thing? People seemed to acknowledge why it happens? Its definitely a bad thing to lose local businesses. Pretty easy to see how they can’t stay competitive too.

Lots of water coming out of the mountains. By the time all these feeders make it to town the river is pretty full right now. These are three different drainages side by side in Smugglers Notch.

Torrential upslope rain on Mansfield too up this way. Felt like rain rates had to be up towards 0.25”/hr at times today. The amount of water coming off the hill is impressive. Smugglers Notch looks like something out of Jurassic Park with water coming out of every gully and then falling off 100-300ft cliffs. Every gully is whitewater.

Just torrential wind driven rain at the base of the mountain. These squalls are fairly impressive when the 30-45dbz stuff blossoms overhead. Wind gusts 30-40mph in heavy rain. Feels like an October nor'easter or something.

The bolded is pretty much how a lot of folks think. People love the "idea" of small mom and pop stores and love to support them... but over time they do get pulled to the cheaper, more convenient locations. It's just human nature. Regarding Lamoille County which I'm sure is mostly driven in the Stowe area... this economy seems fairly hard to beat down because there are plenty of people with excess money that like to travel. So when a restaurant or store closes, another one just pops up in it's place right behind it. The economy here reminds me of Michael Scott in The Office when he's starting his own paper company and doesn't care if it goes out of business. He says "I'll just start another one and then another one and then another one. I have no shortage of company names to use." That sum's up stores and restaurants around here. If one goes out, another one with a new name just shows up in it's spot.

Managing people is like adult babysitting in many instances, just at different levels depending on the job, ha. Empathy goes a long way with a lot of people too. Need to tailor the management style to fit the employees and extract productivity for sure.

Yeah good widespread drink. CoCoRAHS numbers as of 7-8am this morning for past couple days.

That's wild.

Oh for sure and it's happening here... larger companies like to buy boutique places in tourist Vermont. Many of the places that "appear" like they might be on their own are actually owned by larger management companies. Those are the ones that can pay higher wages. I do think this is still a product of standard of living and costs of living increasing at an out-paced level to the small mom and pop economy from the 80s and 90s. Those folks are getting older, retiring, selling, going out of business, because their lives were built around very low wage labor.... and that small business model doesn't exist or survive without a lot of very low wage earners.

I can tell you it was a lot of fun but yeah, suburbs in the 1990s and 2000s were like "you have no option, you are going to college and you will like it." I'm sure it's the same right now though.

Yeah that's extremely true. It's not that they are working less, they are working smarter. My staff of entry level were making some decent coin streaming video games on Twitch at night, they'd do InstaCart after hours and make more money in 20 hours than they would in 40 hours delivering groceries to wealthy second home owners. They are making money, they just aren't doing it through manual labor and low wages, ha.

Not sure what the answer is then, if these places do not raise their wages they will not be able to staff their businesses. So that's what's happening now. The hand is being forced and places around here are raising wages significantly in numerous establishments. I would imagine that starts to take off elsewhere too, if it's not already. I can also see how many people can feel slighted when they are educated and hold a professional job that they've worked at for a while to get up to say $70k a year, while the attendant folding towels with zero job stress and no decision making starts making $38,000 because there is so much demand for that role that's unfilled. The issue here is that skill and demand are starting to have quite the variance. The demand for low-skilled service jobs is extremely high in a lot of places. Around here that demand is certainly a lot higher than it is for good professional level folks or managerial types. That demand will drive wage increases at places that can afford it.

But what if those 18-year olds aren't working and now you are moving into another segment of the population that does need to survive? That's why the service industry is suffering. That mentality of getting a job at 15 is largely gone. I was washing dishes at a local family owned Italian restaurant Thur/Fri/Sat/Sun nights at 15-16. Covered in marinara sauce every night, lol. There's no way they are filling that position right now (they retired and closed anyway about 5 years ago due to labor shortages and getting older). Sort of like Amarshall said, I do think there's a generation of small business owners that are aging now and operated in what was a golden age of high school low-wage low-skilled labor, IMO. I feel like the 90s and 2000s had a good run of that type of labor. Not anymore.

If a family of 4 could live comfortably on Dad's factory wage alone decades ago, people should be able to at least survive without 3 jobs now. There's a very big difference between wages and "livable standards" in the past 50 years. What's the use of having all these jobs out there if people can't survive on them?

Oh for sure. Prices go up. But if an entire service industry can't find employees the way to do it is to raise wages. Most around here have resisted that for literally a decade or more it seems. When I first moved here starting wages were about the same as they were a year ago. And it was talked about back then. Finally places are realizing that's the way they get employees. My wife was finally able to hire people at those wages. And my wife started in that spa as a college student folding towels at the pool for a summer job at $10/hr... and now she is on the hotel executive team. Good ol' American dream working your way up to the top. But high school and college kids seem to be working less and less, it used to be like a large group of high schoolers or college kids that help out in the summer. Now it seems much, much less than even a decade ago. Maybe parents don't make their kids get jobs like that anymore? But just seems like less of that high school/college labor pool that has a place to live already (usually mom and dad) so they can work for an unlivable wage.

$12/hr work just isn’t happening anymore because you can’t even survive on it. The ski areas, tourism industry, restaurants, hotels, etc up here are all dealing with it. They need J1 international labor to work for those wages, Americans just won’t do it unless they are in high school. My wife is spa director at a local hotel and they went from $12-13/hr starting pre-COVID to $17/hr base wage to work like Spa desk and to restock towels/robes. Hotels around here need to start at $17-19/hr just to get people to apply. Hell even McDonalds is saying like $15/hr in Morrisville I think. Its not a bad thing to raise entry level wages, they are so far off from a livable wage. Or you can pay $12/hr but you need to supply employee housing.

Oh yeah that veering is way up there to start, my bad. That looks like it would be centered along the crest with some west/east spread being pretty equal. Agreed that the summits of the ski areas should do better than most just based on elevation and a longer residence time in cold air while precipitation is ongoing. That second sounding of the HRRR is a much more blocked flow with a lower veering height. Those NNW winds love to drop and compress just in the lee of the terrain the lower in altitude they get. But immediately west of that line, wherever it sets up, is in the zone. Upper west side the best location for some whitening? The whole 2kft plateau is game for a whitening, IMO.

$5k for 10k of cards seems like it’s be a great return, no idea on what prices are though. Sounds like a good value for most cards being worthless, on a card collection decades later. Chance of a couple being worth big money? Definitely tough to sell a loved one’s belongings though, can definitely understand hesitation. I haven’t thought of sports cards in a very long time, this is a good trip back in time.

I’ve had that guy in fantasy football past few seasons and he’s an absolute beast though when it comes to top line stats. Big numbers weekly. No idea on his personality though .

West wind at surface under a NE wind aloft will crush the west side of the crest. That’s a classic highly blocked flow... @backedgeapproaching might be white tomorrow morning too? I’d be surprised if that wind profile allows for enough propagation eastward to Mt Snow and Stratton? Isn’t the spine down there more like Woodford? Guess I’ll have to look at the sounding, but it’ll depend how far up in the atmosphere you go until that west wind backs NE... because it’s hard to get the upslope band to work west when fighting NE flow above it.

Toss me in the club of folks who have boxes and boxes of cards from the early to mid 90s. I think my parents donated a bunch of them too, but I know there’s still a lot of Topps MLB cards.

About to get wet at 2800ft. Damn rain keeps ruining the afternoons, ha. Need more Stein.

Gonna get more wet... right where it's apparently needed.

And? Be interesting if some mangled flakes are flying around in the high ground in the morning.

Some flakes for the Massif?