I would only worry if your kid expressed concerns. My daughter expressed concerns about heat and humidity, but applied to schools in DC. I would have been concerned if she had chosen to attend one of them. I’m a northerner, and attended school on a large campus in snowy upstate NY. We walked through the snow a lot. It is really a matter of dressing appropriately. Sadly, I often had to remind my daughter to wear gloves at home in New England, and have the same conversations on the phone while she attends school in PA.
@homerdog and @MWolf - my dog holds it in until the very last second and then zips in and out. He hasn’t travelled more than 6 feet from the back door either last night or today.
I do have a coat for him and musher’s secret for his paws but he hates it when it drops below 10.
Lol, I have a kid doing this now. After a lifetime in the frigid, windswept plains as one of God’s Frozen Chosen, she got her first job in CA (Northern). She scoffs at the puffy coat because, well, it never gets to freezing. I suspect, in time, she’ll change her tune…
I live in Wisconsin. My older daughter went to college in southern California. Her college graduation was held the second-to-last weekend in April, and both D2 and I got sunburns. It was in the mid 80s. But we were just happy to be there. It had snowed in Wisconsin and in Minnesota, where D2 was a sophomore in college at the time, the day of our flights to the west coast.
“Don’t forget, most places that have cold winters also have beautiful spring…” Oh, man, how people come out in spring, first chance they get! Sleeveless, tops on convertibles are down, walking about. Right now, it’s 39 here. Feels balmy. Agree with others, we joke it’s shorts weather.
I adore the CA weather, but don’t fool yourself that it doesn’t get shiveringly cold there. It can go into the 30’s, even in Orange County. No, not for a month. And so many have been skiing, not like they don’t know about keeping hands and feet warm.
My variant on momofsenior1’s comment is: when it’s horribly cold, you can eventually put on enough clothing. When it’s blisteringly hot, even taking it all off doesn’t necessarily help.
Today, we have a glorious high, blue sky, lots of sunshine. And that 39 degrees. I’ll bet I’m not the only one who went out without zipping her jacket.
I grew up in the midwest, went to WashU for undergrad, Berkeley for grad school, and am still in the bay area and have no plans to ever deal with serious winter again aside from a few days skiing here and there but like a lot of people here have also said, I prefer cold weather to hot humid weather. But also, too many gray days in a row make me climb the walls so there’s that as well.
In any case, WashU had kind of the worst of both worlds with both a serious winter and a very humid summer that could last partially into October. We’d have just a few of those really nice days every year where the weather was just perfect and we’d say it was ‘too nice to work’ and either ditch class or convince teachers to hold class outside. When I started at Cal the first week every single day it was one of those ‘too nice to work’ days and I realized I’d have to start working even when the weather was great ;-).
So maybe it makes sense to send our kids to school in a worse climate… fewer outdoorsy distractions so more time to study :-). My kids all hate hot weather and don’t seem to mind cold anyway. Oldest ended up in Oregon for college.
For a college student there is no need to shovel the snow and if at an urban college in a city with good public transit there is no need to drive in it.
I am also amused when reading here about students from SoCal (among other areas) who are upset when told they cannot bring their cars to campus at schools like Northeastern, BU and even NYU. I assume they have never ridden a subway before. Of course they can bring a car and park it off campus and pay $5000/semester in a garage.
One important thing- when you can’t be outside in winter, groups tend to focus more on each other, ways to get along and build relationships, inside. It’s a different orientation.
Newly in LA, I went to a party where there were, in effect, no four walls. People walked outside, came and went, some wandered into the pool, and more. No one really had to interact much. It struck me how, in the northeast winter, you’re in that room, lol, somewhat forced to get to know others. Not a bad skill.
CA has a good amount of variation in climate. Just going a few miles inland can often dramatically change the amount of temperature fluctuation. In coastal southern CA, the very low temperatures such as 30s are the night time minimum, when few are outside. Day time temperatures are more pleasant. For example in my area, the coldest day of 2018 was Dec 29th, which had a high of 62F and low of 41F. By ~6AM the temperature was >50F, so only extreme early risers and those out very late at night experienced temperatures below 50F that day. However, there are other areas with very different climates. I could drive an hour inland and get to a mountainous area with snow on the ground during a portion of the year. That mountainous area borders a desert where temperatures regularly exceed 110F during the summer.
When it gets really hot, some people put on more: https://www.esquireme.com/culture/kandora-explained
I transferred to Northeastern the year they got 96 inches of snow. I had grown up in NC and if there was a flake on the ground we cancelled school. It was an adjustment, but I loved it! I love snow and in the city, I didn’t have to shovel. If you kid is on campus I don’t think it’s a huge deal.
D1 is in Florida- people asked if I was concerned about hurricanes. I admit that I am glad she has her car so she can evacuate herself, but living close to an airport so she can fly out is actually more important. We get hurricanes in NC too, so I just kind of laugh.
“If you are going to be concerned about weather you should also be concerned about earthquakes and wildfires at UCLA and Berkeley, hurricanes and floods at Rice, tornadoes at WUSTL and Vanderbilt etc.”
I see a big difference with the things you listed. For example, UC Berkeley has not had a major earthquake in the area since 1989 (almost 30 years ago). And in SoCal, the last big quake was Northridge in 1994 (almost 25 years ago). While we have had some drought years in CA lately causing some major forest fires, the chances that any of that will affect the 100’s of colleges in the state is very small.
Contrast that with the extreme weather conditions in the parts of the north and east that will happen year in and year out. I think we are comparing apples to oranges here.
Lastly, some have said that they would rather have extreme cold than extreme heat/humidity but there are many college locations in the US that have NEITHER. Good discussion and lots of different opinions that make this site so great!
This made me chuckle. We live in New England. My DD didn’t even own a pair of boots until she went to college…in California where it never snowed. Gloves? The only gloves either of my kids had were ski gloves…which they wore…skiing.
My son went to college in Boston where it’s cold and there is plenty of snow. We would go visit in the winter, and there were plenty of kids walking around in flip flops, and hoodies.
My kid had winter weather clothes…but I never once reminded him to wear them in college…and since I wasn’t there, I don’t know if he did…or not!
Absolutely, @socaldad2002 ! It’s a concern but it’s really up to the kid whether it’s a deal breaker or just an issue of buying warm clothes. Both my (So Cal) kids chose schools in cold weather zones - one even insisted on only applying in places where it snowed - but it’s a valid concern for those of us who raised children in mild climates because they don’t really know what they’re getting into. My older sister went from N. California to Northwestern, lasted a year and transferred to Stanford (those were the days) - she hated the cold and felt miserable away from the west. Even on the west coast we have some spots that have better weather than others - some folks find Seattle exciting and others find it dreary and depressing. Some kids don’t mind humidity and others run the other way from Southern schools. Weather is an important consideration, but how important it is depends upon the individual student.
Classes at UC Berkeley were cancelled for two days because of air quality issues last November. UCLA cancelled classes in 2017 due to another fire. Although it does occasionally happen, it’s rare for schools in New England to cancel classes. Most of the time they just plow out and get on with things. Hurricane Harvey closed down Rice, and the campus has had hurricane warnings where students were advised to shelter in place. Those incidents would have scared my kids more than snow.
In the end I think it comes down to what you’re used to. People in SoCal love their climate but I remember the first time I visited. To my eye everything looked dead. I couldn’t imagine living in an area so brown. I’ve since come to appreciate a dryer climate after spending a lot of time in Mexico, but I’ll still never love it the way someone who grew up there can. Honestly snow and cold can be a pain, and I can see why someone not accustomed to them might be worried, but they just don’t feel like a big deal to me, any more than high humidity, water bans, smog, or tornado alerts.
In the end I’d listen to my kid. If they don’t want to go to school in a cold climate (or a hot climate, or a rainy climate, or whatever) why push it? There are great schools all over. Climate isn’t the stupidest reason to take a school off the list. If, on the other hand, your kid wants to try something new, why not let them? Kids are malleable, and if natives love where they live it seems reasonable to think transplants can happily adjust to local weather conditions as well.
I’m a veteran of the Boston blizzard of '78 & the Chicago whiteout a year later that toppled “the Machine” because it couldn’t clear the streets & keep the trains running.
Not a big fan of really cold weather, but temps are not the most important variable for this discussion: size of campus is. Regardless of the number of students or the temps, the key factor is how spread out the campus is. A 3-minute walk in 10- degree cold can be invigorating; waiting for a bus for 15 minutes or hiking across a huge campus in 30-degree or rainy weather can destroy your morale. Compact campuses are out there–look for them if you are worried about the cold.
@moooop I agree with that. The schools that our S19 has applied to are small. At home here, he has to take turns walking our dog and snow blowing the driveway in cold weather. If he goes to a cold weather LAC, someone else will take care of shoveling and he’ll just have short walks wherever he goes. People forget too that, in the coldest climates, snow removal is well done. It’s only in places that don’t get a lot of snow (maybe somewhere like DC or Portland OR) where everything shuts down with one inch of snow.
@socaldad2002 CU Boulder does have fantastic weather. The area can have a rockin snow storm (perfect for a weekend on the slopes) and two days later, students are literally in t-shirts. The sun is intense; that’s how many parts of CO work. My family went skiing last weekend. I stayed at the cabin and took my dog for a long walk while wearing shorts, one day after a major snow dump. CO weather rocks.
Thanks, homerdog…I just want to mention that even some “big” schools have compact campuses. My kid who went to the U of Nebraska lived in a dorm, a sorority house, & an off-campus apartment, but was never more than a 5-minute walk from class. For most majors, that campus is a marvel of convenience (agriculture & other majors that need space are located on a separate campus a short drive away).
I don’t want to scare any parents or students from UW-Madison or other Wisconsin schools but I will share that next week, the temperature is supposed to drop to a level that will cause wind chills of 50 below zero. Oh, joy.