Countdown to Vancouver: Olympic weather forecasting no small job

Record warm weather in January and a lack of snow have prompted Olympic organizers in Vancouver to take added measures. Crews are hauling extra snow up to Cypress Mountain.

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The shortage of snow already has prompted organizers to use straw bales on the mountain to help create jumps and corners for the snowboarding and freestyle skiing venues.

The weather is a huge factor in the games. And forecasting it correctly is so important that the Canadian government is providing Olympic organizers with more than a dozen meteorologists and 60 surface weather stations.

For an Olympic weather forecaster, what could be more perfect than having a crystal ball? If only it were that easy. They will use an instrument that looks like a crystal ball, but it only measures sunlight. It will not tell you if rain, snow or wind is on the way, which is critical.

Environment Canada has assembled some of the niftiest weather prediction tools ever for the 2010 Olympics.

"On a planetary scale, the Olympic venues are tiny and, yet, all kinds of weather can come out of them in a matter of minutes," said Chris Doyle of Environment Canada.

Some 30 weather stations have been set up around the alpine venues.

They're filled with instruments accurate enough to predict weather in an area the size of a city block, and update it every 15 minutes.

One of those instruments is a wind profiler. It essentially is a giant speaker that shoots sound waves some 2000 meters into the air, which are then tracked by radar.

"And from that we can track the speed of the wind by the ways the eddies move," added Doyle.

That gives Doyle and his team a 30-minute heads up on what weather in Squamish is headed to Whistler.

The gadgets are no substitute for people.

"This feels like the Olympics of weather forecasting," said Doyle.

Andrew Teakes won himself a prestigious place on the forecasting team. He will be at the ski jump. Whether it is safe to go or not will hang on his advice.

"I find it a thrill to be there and be able to provide that information," said Andrew Teakes, an Olympic forecaster.

During the first days of the Games, the Canadian government's meteorologists will provide hourly forecasts for every ski run.

However, what they cannot produce is snow. But Olympic organizers say they have "the best ice meisters and snow makers in the business on standby," along with 5 million more gallons of water in a reservoir to make the snow.

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