SnowGoose69

The Op Euro since the upgrade 2 winters ago in systems that aren’t overly strong at the surface has tended to have a flat bias. I think the ensembles are definitely going to be more north and west. The Euro also tends to make slow adjustments. Sometimes if models are catching onto the setup late the Euro can still be making adjustments inside 12-18 hours

Many cases where the low is above 995-998mb it’s happened

The last few years when the NavGem has been this far north and west at this range it’s rarely not led to the flatter models coming further west

It’s hard to know without details but the UKMET I’m guessing wouldn’t even be snow in ATL. That’s probably the more classic BHM-RMG-CHA snow track

These types of systems are probably the most favorable for that region because they do not tend to move NW as much with time because they don’t have the deep surface low. I’ve seen plenty end of destroying MCN though and missing ATL

The RGEM is in though 42 and is insanely far NW at 42 compared to the 06Z run at 48

Climatologically wise that is not the worst idea. I always tell people, do not forecast near record or record amounts unless model agreement is high.

Xiamen gusting to 80mph and their wind is offshore which means the center passed northeast of them. You'd have to think places just east of center gusting to 100-110. Satellite appearance I think this is a 95-100mph storm, not 125 as JTWC has

The RGEM had been dreadfully slow since its upgrade last year with most events. Using the NAM though which also tends slow I would say anyone from about central northern NJ east sees nothing before 10pm other than spotty light rain here or there.

The school factor is not too big, that tends to be more significant based on the location of where the job you're applying for is who where the boss or bosses went to school. If you're applying for a job in California and went to San Jose State you may be at a big advantage vs. the guy who went to Penn State...the opposite might be true for East Coast jobs. I've long said East Coast schools or ones like Wisconsin/OU in the middle of the nation may be the grads with edges because the vast majority of jobs in meteorology tend to seem to be east of the Mississippi outside of Boulder CO/Norman OK.

IMO the U.S. National Weather Service needs to adopt similar training programs to which many other National Weather Services around the world have including the Canadian, UK Met Office, and BoM have whereby all incoming forecasters I think are subject to an 8-12 month course which teaches forecasting...too many incoming Mets have next to no experience and the only reason that the forecasts that do get put out in this country are superior to those around the world is that we have the best forecasting models by a large margin as well as a massive upper air network.

The other issue to remember is that often times, even in the case of an intern the MIC is trying to fill a focal point hole. If the last intern or perhaps one of the journeyman who just left was the webmaster for the office page he or she is going to be looking for qualified interns with strong HTML/programming abilities to replace this slot assuming the office does not have someone else already on staff readily able to take over the role. Same goes if they recently lost someone who was responsible for the outreach or hydrology sectors, they would try to find a candidate with some public presentation/media or hydrological experience respectively...its not always there but if it is that said candidate will have a significant edge over the others.

The SCEP may be going away but with the # of Vets coming out of the service given a mass downsizing that occurred in the last year it may as well just cancel it out. And the SCEP was not really the only way to get in, at certain offices such as State College, Albany, Norman, Grand Forks and a few others it was a major obstacle to the non SCEP crew but in smaller locales away from universities it was far from a complete blocking issue. SCEPs generally took advantage of the fact they could get into desireable locations, the worst location I have ever seen a SCEP walk into a slot was Little Rock, AR and believe me, Little Rock is a relatively nice city, but by standards of someone used to a bigger city it may not seem that desireable. If you're looking to apply to Goodland, Elko, San Juan, or Caribo its highly unlikely you ever needed to concern yourself with SCEP applicants.

I'm a computer moron, what is GIS? I see and hear about it all the time, I want to say its the NWS comp system deal but isn't that GFE?

In this economy, not much because when the job market is very poor you rarely find people with degrees too far outside of a career getting jobs in it. In 1999 people with Chemistry degrees were getting hired to work finance jobs because there were not enough people out there with business, marketing, or finance degrees looking for work to fill those jobs, but thats certainly not happening now. Earth Science teacher and environmental science positions are two that I know of where many people with meteorology degrees work, I'm sure there are others too.

From about 1990-2005 the employment out of school was very good for those who had internships and went hard for jobs, it dropped markedly thereafter due to the stiff competition due to more graduates and slowing NWS openings (which really started more in the latter part of the 90s). The employment was pretty dismal in the 80s from I understand before the NWS expansion started occurring, I met a shoe salesman in a store in NYC when I was still in high school who graduated in 1984 who said he could not find any employment and a friend of the family also had a son who graduaed around 1985 with similar problems...the whole thing may be somewhat of a cycle, we could see a drop off 10-15 years in the # of Met grads due to spreading word of the employment problems and the whole thing could repeat again.

My experience is that many people with a degree in this field often never work in it, either because they realize late in their college career that they do not want to relocate away from their home region, the pay is much worse than they anticipated, the shift work is an issue for them or for whatever reason they decide they'd rather do something else. It seemed back when I graduated school that those who wanted to find work in the field DID and the rest simply did not want to work in the field, now it seems its alot harder, even for those with high GPAs and internships during their college tenure.

The CWSU thing has been ended for now...so no changes, but it does not mean the 2 office consolidation idea won't eventually come back. The biggest problem in this field I think in 2011 is not so much breaking in, its very much advancing or moving around and I'm not talking about NWS people (its getting harder to advance and move there too!)....there are many graduates now so what is occurring is that alot of the positions that 10 years ago went to people with experience no longer are because they are so many cheap labor new grads in addition to a shaky economy where businesses are trying to be cautious with their money. If only some clients of these corporations knew how horrendously experienced, or NOT experienced some of these people were providing them with weather advice they'd probably run for the hills...with that said I was just informed last night about another recent position with a relatively large company that has gone to someone right out of school, a position which is in a very sensitive area of the field which should never be going to a person without IMO at least 10 years of experience.

Even that section I have bolded is often not true....I know of several very good jobs in the private sector that were open in the last couple of years which went to people right out of school despite the fact they did indeed interview multiple candidates who were way more eperienced and qualifited....the reason? Obviously they can pay them alot less....in reality people coming out of school have alot of say as to whether or not they break into the career...if they do 1 or 2 internships during the course of their undergraduate career and develop knowledge of forecasting they will have an exceptionally good chance of being competitive for entry level jobs, a decade ago someone could be a forecast ditz out of school and probably still get hired...the hardest job to get in this field nowadays is more the 2nd one than the first since because as you said there is such a massive supply of entry level folk you need to give them a damn good reason they should hire you for more money instead. This of course brings up the other issue that you could get stuck where you're at...this has become a topic of discussion recently in the NWS...people at HPC/TPC/OPC are having a very hard time transferring to a WFO, the same goes for interns trying to lateral and interns trying to become forecasters at offices other than the one they are in....one of the mets on this board tried to lateral as an intern 4 or 5 times and was rejected on each one.

Oh goodness, he recently retired I believe from somewhere in California I think...I can envision that one "Ladies and Gentlemen, we are gonna see some HEAVEH SNOW tonight!" March 2001 and February 1989 are remembered alot more because they were busts for a much larger area where there is a significant population and they also produced snow over relatively populated areas too (Keene NH had 7 inches of snow in one hour during the March 01 storm)...the Dec 89 storm is not remembered by many people because it busted primarily over the NY Metro and the surprise snows dumped generally over places like BGM, MSV, ALB and other parts of E NY...many of those places heading into the evening were forecast to be cloudy with a chance of flurries and saw 8-12 inches of snow.

My experience largely shows that not wanting to relocate and S/O issues are the two most frequent barriers to people never getting jobs in the field more than it is the market itself. Recently I think with the increased number of grads the lack of jobs is becoming a bigger factor. One thing I would strongly tell anyone is that if you do become involved in a relationship with another student in the department that one of you will likely never work in the field...unless you live in either the BWI/DC or Norman/OKC metro areas...those are really the only two places in the nation that 2 meteorlogists can both find work in...generally whoever lands the job first will be the meteorologist of the family and the other will have to explore other options...I know of 3 couples who ultimately did this.

It comes down to what many people say here alot, especially Steve D...you have to be looking at the satellite/radar images with an unbiased eye 12-24 hours from the event, very often you will see things that tell you something is going differently...its less an issue now with the great models we have but 20+ years ago it was way more useful...The Dec 89 storm was a disaster because it was obvious by 2-3pm that afternoon if you looked at the satellite imagery that the low was going to develop way west....its remarkable to this day how badly that event was handled by the models and the forecasts....the warnings for 5-8 inches were not dropped til midnight.

We saw forecasts playing catchup on storms increasing accumulations late such as the 96 blizzard, the 12/09 storm, and most recently the 12/26/10 event...this was a case where the forecasts were desperately playing catchup the other direction...many meteorologists knew the morning the storm started when it was raining that it was going to be a bust but it was taking seemingly forever for that message to get through to the media.

Law is a horrid career to get into these days and most lawyers will tell you that themselves...its actually alot like meteorology in that there are simply too many lawyers out there...the issue though unlike meteorology is not that its hard to get a job its hard to get a good one and considering how long and how much work it takes to get a law degree it makes it that much more unacceptable to get payed poorly...20 years ago you could have gone to "Podunk University Law" and gotten a 6 figure paying job out of school, nowadays you had better have gone to a top tier school or graduated with a 3.8 or higher from one of the lower tier ones or you can forget about ever making 6 figures, I'm not talking about out of school, I mean for the duration of your career....there is no reason with 1,000 Columbia grads they are hiring a guy who went to U Albany with a 3.1 GPA. ...business is a broad scale major that covers you for many careers, but many of those are areas which tend to be highly economy reliant in that when the economy is in the gutter you are going to struggle mightily to land a job in any of them.