Vancouver-ites love to boast about their multi-cultural city. From a long aboriginal history, to the second largest Chinatown in North America (after San Francisco), to the European heritage of many locals, it feels like almost every culture has representatives here-- which makes for excellent eating! But, no culture has been able to use its prowess to successfully get the weather gods to dump enough snow this year!
Most people think that once you cross the border into Canada it snows eight months a year and we all live in igloos. Here on the west coast, it's not the case AT ALL. Winter days are typically in the 40s, nights in the 30s. In summer, we see days in the high 70s and cooler at night. Rain is rarely in short supply and, fortunately, that turns to snow at a certain elevation which makes for fantastic skiing! Except this year.
So far this winter, I have yet to pull out more than a suit jacket or raincoat when I go outside. My heavy boots to cope with upstate New York snow remain in a box somewhere. While DC was “blessed” with two feet of snow last Friday, I went for a run in shorts and a tank top with the mercury topping out at 63 degrees! I've also been golfing through December and January.
Unfortunately, the North Shore ski hills have seen much of the same. Cypress Mountain was closed to skiers for part of last month to “save” snow for the Olympics. In the past two weeks, crews began hundreds of trips to truck snow up the hill to build up the base for the snowboarders. I'll be interested to see if any athletes react to the less than ideal conditions and if it affects performance. Thursday, Olympic officials admitted the conditions at Cypress were their “worst case scenario.”
Whistler had some big dumps of snow in the early part of winter which is serving them well now. But one thing we can all rely on.... the man made ice will be good for all those skaters. Thank you to the Zamboni drivers!
I'm sure we'll revisit this topic as the games go on.... for better or worse, these are the conditions we have.
Until then,
Leigh
