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Comment by gk1 | Hacker News Reader

Yes, I was surprised by this:

> Vermont has budgeted grants for about 100 new remote workers in the first three years of the program and about 20 additional workers per year for every year after.

Vermont lost 10,000 working-age residents over the past five years.[1] This plan will (in theory) recover just ~1% of that.

Maybe they're monitoring reactions to this announcement before they put more money into the program? Otherwise I don't see how this is supposed to make any difference to their problem.

[1] https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/money/2016/07/21/v...

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With skiing in the east an industry in rough shape since it doesn't snow anymore, and agriculture in a slow death spiral, Vermont is trying to embrace it's potential as a bedroom community for NYC and Boston.

Burlington is a cool little city and the countryside is beautiful as well. If they can use a small program like this to stimulate some cadre of "pioneers", they'll get alot of value, and perhaps some improved outlooks for underutilized former IBM people.

I hadn't heard that there has been a decline in snowfall, it's pretty stark in the Pacific West:

https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica...

I live in Upstate NY. We get snowfall, but after the storm blows out, it gets warm. This January/February, I cleared my roof of snow wearing shorts, and the temp was around 65-70.

I don't totally understand the figure. What is determining the number of data points taken? It looks like the density of readings in the NW is much higher than in the NE.

I would assume that most of the snowfall data comes from ski resorts, and there are a lot more of those in the west than in the east.

Snowfall data at ski resorts isn't reliable because they make snow, and the incentive is to lie toward favorable amounts for marketing purposes. In Colorado a few years ago a number of resorts were caught blatantly fabricating snowfall amounts and then they combated this with variations on snow stake cams published on their web site.

Anyway, there are quite a few NOAA SNOTEL sites all over that have reliable data and for sure snow pack is on a decline, and there's also USDA NRCS who use that data and publish agricultural specific interpretations of it. Further, due to budget constraints, some of these data may stop being tracked and produced altogether.

https://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/ftpref/gis/images/co_swepctnor...

https://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/ftpref/gis/images/mt_swepctnor...

Note the notice under the date.

By that data Vermont has slightly increased rates of snowfall over the last 70 years. This paper also references studies that predict Vermont will see an increase of snow over the next few decades as well: https://www.northeastern.edu/climatereview/?p=282

Stowe has co-working spaces. Hudson County NJ doesn't have those (not really).

Crazy.

Hoboken has a couple. I used to live in Edgewater (not Hudson County, though), they opened one right as I moved to upstate NY.

I know Hoboken has one or two at least, but I'm North Bergen so closer to Edgewater than Hoboken!

I can actually (and have) walked to Edgewater.

I was definitely not being completely honest, but there is an insane number of people in Hudson county, it's surprising there aren't offices for corworking spaces. But I guess because of the demographics and most people absolutely not being in tech is the answer.

The big resorts make their own snow so it's not like things are completely dead. But there is the subconscious thing for visitors nearby where if there's no snow in NYC or Boston they forget that there is always snow on the major mountains here.

Artificial snow is atrocious to ski on. It's incredibly sticky, and towards the middle of the day, feels like wading through mashed potatoes.

>"With skiing in the east an industry in rough shape since it doesn't snow anymore, and agriculture in a slow death spiral,..."

Can you elaborate on the slow death spiral of agriculture part? Are you talking about the effects of globalization factory farms or something else specific to Vermont/Northesat?

Sure.

Dairy is dying for various reasons, and supplemental sources of income like Maple sugaring are impacted by climate change.

Vegetable businesses are tough as well as plots are small and you cannot compete with massive agribusinesses in California and South America.

Interesting I had not heard this about the dairy industry. Indeed it seems they even had a congressional bailout of sorts recently as well. Thanks.

> With skiing in the east an industry in rough shape since it doesn't snow anymore

I'm not sure where you are coming up with that. In fact many places in the NE have have multiple top 10 all time snowfalls in the last 10 years.

Climate change is expected to increase the precipitation in New England, particularly in the winter and the temperature increase can result in more snow due to the increased ability of the air to hold moisture. In general we'll probably have better skiing for the next few decades at which point snow _may_ start to be replaced with rain, depending on how high the temp goes where you happen to be.

The temperature swings are the killer — I think they lose about 8-10 days per season as compared to the 80s.

https://www.northeastern.edu/climatereview/?p=282

That seems to be based on this paper: http://www.int-res.com/articles/cr2009/39/c039p001.pdf

That is a really weird paper, basically they are assuming that the 98-99 season is representative of some abstract season in the 2040-2069 time period which is at best a questionable assumption. But even with the questionability they are showing a 8-10day decrease sometime in 2040-2069?

I think they also leave out major changes in snowmaking. The mountains I visit have lost a lot of access to snowmaking due to regulations limiting their water use and changes to what bacterium are used for nucleation.

The temperature swings are in some cases actually a benefit for season longevity. What you often want is a good dumping early in the season and then some rain / wet snow followed by a freeze to build a good hard base for later in the season.

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