Braving blizzards, snowball fights and cancelled classes, AU students have been pelted with unseasonably cold weather that only Vancouver, British Columbia, the site of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, could learn to envy.
Tomorrow, thousands of athletes, fans and audiences will watch as the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics attempts to mask the problems facing this year’s games. While many of them are minor and expected, there are the problems of a lack of snow and unusually warm weather.
According to Environment Canada weather data, the British Columbia region experienced its warmest January in history last month. The average temperature was 44.9 degrees. This number is well above D.C.'s January 2010 average temperature, recorded at 35.3 degrees by Weather.com.
Blame for the uncharacteristically warm weather has be placed on the shoulders of El Niño, an abnormal warming of surface waters in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. Occurring every three to seven years along the coasts of Peru and Ecuador, El Niño spread north to effect weather patterns in North America.
The last time the Winter Olympics faced a no-snow scare were the 1988 in Nagano, Japan. The chances of snow looked slim. However, with the opening ceremony came more snow than Nagano could handle, forcing organizers to cancel events and leaving spectators stranded.
Especially hurt by the warm temperatures in Vancouver has been Cypress Mountain, the location of two of the games’ most popular events: freestyle skiing and snowboarding.
Rather than pleading for Mother Nature to shed a frozen tear on Cypress, the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympics Winter Games has responded the only way it knows how: by starting dump trucks, snowcats and helicopter engines.
The extensive effort to “make it snow” on Cypress Mountain began mid-January. Since then, over 300 truckloads of snow have made the trip from the top of Mount Strachan, where snow is being collected. Snowcats have been working around the clock, pushing dumped snow to create snowboarding and skiing course features on top of more than 1,000 bales of straw that will serve as the courses’ foundations.
The amount of snow flown in by air-crane helicopter is equally impressive. The helicopter’s bucket, capable of holding 13,000 to 15,000 pounds, has dumped an average of 780 tons of snow per day onto Cypress Mountain since Feb. 3, according to USAToday.
Despite the continuous activity on the mountain, the VANOC and International Olympic Committee will most likely field anxious questions about the conditions of the Cypress Mountain throughout the Winter Games.
Tim Gayda, vice president of sports for the VANOC, told USAToday in January that the manpower being used to prepare Cypress Mountain will not go to waste.
“We are running these events in Cypress,” Gayda said. “We have no intention of moving from that venue. We have enough people and enough snow to get the job done.”
President of IOC Jacques Rogge reaffirmed Gayda’s statement in a press conference Feb. 8.
“There is no concern, and there is no ‘Plan B,’” Rogge said.
In order to protect the snow on Cypress Mountain, the VANOC closed a nearby ski resort and cancelled training. Freestyle skiers were allowed their first runs down the mountain Monday, just five days before the first women’s moguls qualifiers on Saturday. Two of five halfpipe training days were canceled
In an interview with USAToday, 2006 women’s halfpipe gold medalist for the USA Hanna Teter said weather has a large impact on the quality of the halfpipe.
“It really depends on the air temperature and the humidity," Teter said. "If it’s really warm and humid, that makes for a sloppy pipe and that will really affect everybody. You’ve just got to buck up and try to ride it the best you can.”
Whatever the conditions on the slopes when the Vancouver Games begin on Feb. 12, United States women’s freestyle skier Shannon Bahrke told USAToday the athletes will not shy away from the chance to win Olympic gold.
“We’ve worked our whole lives for this,” Bahrke said. “It’s not going to be, ‘Nope, I’m not going to do it.’”
The forecast for Vancouver heading into the Olympics does not predict much help from Mother Nature, with temperatures in the low 40s and rain on the way, according to Weather.com. VANOC has chemicals they can use to harden the snow on courses, specifically the halfpipe, but hope to avoid using them until the last possible moment.
With the snow appearing to have worked its way through D.C.’s system, AU students will now have to tune into the 2010 Winter Olympics for a reminder of what campus looked like for a week, even though the snow they will see on Cypress Mountain did not fall from the sky.
You can reach this writer at sports@theeagleonline.com.
