SnowGoose69

If still be inclined to drop amounts from NYC west by 6-10 inches or so, this could be the euro playing gradual catchup, if we shift 40-50 miles more I think 15 inches in NYC is about right

This x100. The meteorology field today is very competitive and getting squeezed by both sides. Jobs are disappearing as technology (forecast automation) are taking over forecasting jobs, while at the same time there has been an influx (and more coming) of college graduates who are trying to find jobs. In order to find a meteorology job with a BS nowadays you need to have at least two of a few things.

1. Come from a good school

2. really good grades

3. connections

4. experience in the field. (internships, co-op programs etc.)

5. luck

I suggest you visit the AMS site, they have some good information about careers and they keeps tabs on which schools offer meteorology programs.

http://www.ametsoc.o...nter/index.html

And just for fun here is the WxChallenge Forecasting site where students and colleges compete in a yearly forecasting competition. The top schools for the competition can be found here (pick a year and submit "Team Standings"):

http://wxchallenge.c...ive_results.php

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.

I think you'd be surprised at how little forecasting there is in undergrad. I mean, it is there, but it isn't a primary focus. I gather most forecasting skills are picked up along the way (using the knowledge you gained in school) and on-the-job. I know that even at bigger programs like Penn State, while graduate school is obviously researched-focused, they even have forecasting classes at the graduate level. So don't get too down about it.

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.

Whose decision was this? I want to know who to be pissed off at.

The MIC of LOT explained the hiring system, from the application to the points to the "gold group" to the interview and whatnot and it sounds nearly impossible to get in unless it's through SCEP. So it really sucks that SCEP is going away.

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.

The NWS road show stopped in at Valpo on Monday and this year it included a Valpo grad who was working for United Airlines (technically ENSCO) as well.

The MIC of LOT and IWX were both there, and they said right now they can't desperately want people who have GIS minors, or CompSci minors, or in LOT's case, people who can speak/write Spanish. It's all about diversifying yourself, interning EVERYWHERE you can, getting good grades, and being professional. This is why I like Valpo meteorology, the program is so small that I know all the professors and they all know me, and they are telling it like it is: be a go-getter and be better than everyone else or reconsider your major.

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?

I hadn't really thought about interpreting it that way when I first saw this article, but you both may very well be correct. The Georgetown data that was posted seems to suggest this.

Question is, what can one with a meteorology degree do after school that is not related to the field? I'd welcome any degreed meteorologists who are not currently in the field to chime in.

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.

That or the folks who simply didn't have a backup goal. It certainly is a problem in meteorology given the relative lack of jobs. I would like to see universities more aggressively prepare undergrads for the reality of meteorology, but I have heard all too often of undergrads/grad students thinking they had guaranteed jobs out of college, so it is obvious students are unprepared. Of course, much responsibility falls onto the students themselves, but the university plays a major role as well.

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.

Please read this if you're thinking of meteorology for a career..I know its long but it may save you years of frustration!

The number of people who are majoring in meteorology has skyrocketed in recent years and is still increasing. As a result, the number of recent grads seeking employment greatly outnumbers the number of job openings and it gets worse each year. This issue was discussed in the AMS magazine June 2008 issue and at various conferences. I can tell you from first hand experience the problem is real.

According to estimates, the number of new meteorology grads each year as of 2008 was somewhere between 600 and 1000. This number is very large considering that there is only 6 or 7 thousand working in the field. Estimates also put the number of entry level job openings each year at around 285 meaning that less than half of new grads will be able to find work.

The oversupply of qualified meteorologists has drastic consequences that go far beyond the difficulty of simply finding a job. If you are lucky enough to break into the field you will have to go wherever the job takes you since few are fortunate enough to get enough offers allowing them to be choosy. The 2^nd major thing is salary and work environment. The oversupply has driven salary levels down to obscenely low levels. Since NWS jobs are incredibly competitive to get (only about 40 openings a year and hundreds of job seekers) most are forced to obtain employment in the private sector where starting salaries are in the 21-25 k range. I can tell from experience that in the early 2000s, $20,000 / year was a common number. What’s more, raises are often very small and if you do manage to last long enough to climb close to 30 k, you will have a high risk of being laid off unless you have well above average forecasting skills as companies prefer the cheap labour they can get from eager and willing new grads. Since the private companies have so much leverage over employees due to the oversupply, the workload and the work environment is extremely demanding. Why? They can get away with it because if you quit you are easily replaceable! You will be working your tail off - essentially chained to a desk for the duration of your shift dealing with a heavy client load who will call non-stop during times of active weather leaving you little time to properly analyze and forecast the weather. Also, working more than 40 hrs per week with no overtime is common and some places even have 45-50 hour weeks built into the schedule for certain parts of the year. Employees must also deal with awkward shift schedules which may include hours like 2 - 11 am or even split shifts. Why? It’s all about suiting the needs of the company and clients and if employees don’t like it they are replaceable. I wish I could say that the above experience I described in private sector meteorology is the exception but the reality is that it’s the norm. There are some exceptions but only the very top qualified people will get these better jobs in the private sector. As for the NWS, you can pretty much write it off as a job option unless you have an advanced degree and did a student internship with them and even then it will still be really tough to get in. Bottom line, only a few percent of today’s grads will manage to break into the NWS. As for well paying TV jobs, they are equally if not even more competitive. Again, most start in small markets where the pay is 15-25 thousand/year and only a small number make it to big time.

　

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.

I was living in Cleveland for the March 2001 bust, but I remember December 1989 really well. I was in Queens watching Lloyd Lindsay Young calling for close to a foot of snow just as the first raindrops were hitting the window. I couldn't believe my eyes. One of the most upsetting busts of my lifetime as I was really hoping for a day off from school.

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.

the first post is entirely true. getting rid of people in the public sector becomes easy and encouraged in this era of do more and spend less.

the mistake most young public potential forecaster wannabes make is not wanting to relocate. forky is afraid as hell of having to live in the deep south for a few years at some point in time, whether it be public or private. scotty used to be like that also "i must live in new jersey" but i sense a change. mdecoy got it eventually. he griped all the time about new jerseys issues (ones that dont bother me as much) and either moved or was moving to maryland. not a bad compromise. i sorta like my state in spite of it's flaws. (there are too many tony political types outside the dc/balt metro area)

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.

SG, it reminds me of the busts of old-- like back in the 80s (Im sure you remember the Dec 89 storm, when we were forecast to get a foot of snow and ended up with a quick changeover to rain..... this came on the heels of the infamous Feb 89 fiasco.)

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.

It's the same with many professional degrees right now. Go interview some Law School or Business School Seniors right now and ask them how their employment prospects look.

If I was in school right now I'd be studying Mandarin Chinese, and Arabic. Then I'd get an MBA in international finance.

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.

Whoa...that's an unfair stereotype!

I wouldn't even focus on him being stereotypical of the Asian students per say...just that generally the rule is good in math and theory, terrible forecaster....good forecaster, terrible with the math and theory...not always true but true more than 50% of the time...whether its 50.01%, 88.9%, 63.5% etc. I don't know but I'd bet the house its over a 50% correlation for sure.....the smartest people unfortunately often have trouble grasping very basic concepts and social skills...I have such a hard time understanding how someone can be unable at the age of 30 or 40 to hold a 5 minute normal conversation but sadly many PhDs out there in ALL fields, not just meteorology do.

What % of the NWS workforce is currently classified as a minority?

I'd imagine its not all that high but that may be a product more that over the course of my years in this field I have not come across many minorities for whatever reason...I honestly have only seen one African American meteorologist in 15 years and although I have seen numerous Asian professors in the field I don't believe I have ever come across an operational forecaster of Asian descent even though I do see plenty of Asian students at conferences etc.

exactly. Also issues like affirmative action rear their ugly head. I've heard females are getting about 50% of jobs when in fact they still only represent at best 30-40% of graduating mets. Logic would dictate they should only be getting 30-40 % or so of jobs .

30-40%??? Try maybe 15-20% sir and that might be a over estimated percentage as well.

From what I've heard, it hasn't been "easy" to get in since at least the mid 90s. After '93 it got really difficult but this was even before the big explosion of mets. I hope your right and that it's cyclical meaning it will get better at some point in the future. My fear though is that it keeps getting worse and that's why 3-4 years ago, while I'm sure it was tough, it may have been easier getting in than now. If that's the case, 3 or 4 years from now it'll be even worse still. I just wanna know whose getting these jobs. Like I said, 7 years of experience and really good performance reviews, lots of diverse experience, etc..

Its gotten very hard the last 2 years from what I can tell....you are correct from about 93-04 it was it was tough and there was a brief window there from 04-08...if you didn't get in then you was screwed.....when I was in school mid 90s they basically told us AccWx or bust boys and girls!

This is true, and a few of them remain in my classes even going to into being a Spring semester Junior. However, most of those people don't love it enough to hack the math and drop out of the major in the first two years.

Besides, I know grades don't mean that much, but do the people who go into the major with that mindset normally get tons of internships and great grades? I doubt that is your main competition....

I think he was more focusing on the people who fit that bill who do get through the program basically implying they are screwing everyone around them in the field and don't even really have much of an interest yet they are stealing alot of the jobs.

From what I've heard, there is a movement in the TV world back towards real mets.

Change IS to WAS.....it seems the moves in that direction that started maybe 10-15 years ago has slowed quite significantly the last few years or so...I have noticed an increased number of non-mets on TV both TWC, CNN, FOXNEWS, and local stations since maybe 2005-2006....I think the TV personnel more or less realized that in this day of great forecast modeling and strong NWS forecasts overall they can afford to go more with the personality and pretty face.

There are only so few NWS jobs available, so I cannot comprehend where the rest of these thousands of meteorology graduates will find work

They don't, as mentioned in many of the threads many don't ever work in the field or many that initially do eventually move onto something else...the shiftwork bug bites many before the age of 30, particularly women as they don't want to work shifts once they're married and having children...I noticed a marked decline in my ability to tolerate overnight shifts as I got into my late 20s vs. my early 20s...it was an amazing difference in just about a 5-7 year period.

I found the Buffalo Intern position contact at Eastern Region extremely helpful, as long as she was telling me the correct information lol. She talked to me for like 10 minutes on the phone about the process and Veteran's Preference.

Some of the HR reps are good, some are okay, some are quite bad...there was even some really odd activity going on last year during the USAjobs reformat period in which you had to re-send all of your documentation since they switched systems...some of the reps were calling applicants after the close dates asking them to send in their documentation while they were not calling others, this is a big no no since nothing can be sent once the announcement closes, if you missed out you missed out...and its in essence a double no no since if you're going to call some you need to call all.

This is NWS, it just means a lot more people will be entering the private sector jobs.

You're better off doing something else if thats the case though, most people enter this field anticipating they'll eventually get an NWS job since outside of very small percentage of private sector people thats the only way to financially get by, unless of course you have a 2nd income...I'm fortunate enough to be one of those few to make it in the private sector but it took awhile to do so.