Milder El Nino winter could be a worry for Vancouver Olympic organizers: Phillips

TORONTO - While Canadians across much of the country are wondering what's happened to the arrival of wintry weather, the weather phenomenon that's responsible for the balmy climes is drifting like a questionable cloud over the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips said El Nino, which turns up every three to seven years, is one of the worries for the Games and its weather-dependent events such as alpine skiing, freestyle skiing, cross-country skiing, Nordic combined and snowboarding.

An El Nino year - characterized by slightly warmer ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific - usually brings a milder and drier winter for the western and central parts of Canada, said Phillips.

"Let's face it, this is something the organizers would prefer to have - La Nina which we had last year," he said of that other phenomeon which traditionally brings the opposite effects of El Nino.

"We had the perfect kind of Olympic weather."

Last Christmas, heavy snow caused major delays at Vancouver International Airport, which has spent $30 million on new snowploughs and de-icing equipment to prevent travel chaos during the Games.

It will certainly be milder this winter in western and central Canada, however El Nino doesn't always stretch to the Maritimes - that depends on how strong it is, Phillips said.

"With warm sunshine and dryness across all of Canada… Canadians are just pinching themselves, this has clearly been one of the warmest Novembers so far," he said.

"We think that this may very well be the dry run or the dress rehearsal of what we might see more of this winter."

But whether El Nino will be good for the Games is up in the air.

In the past 60 years there have been 17 El Ninos. In Vancouver, 15 of those have been warmer than normal while two have been colder, Phillips said.

But El Nino doesn't have the same effect on Whistler, which sits at a higher elevation. Phillips said there's almost an immunity there from the warm, mild Pacific breezes, even in the warmest El Nino ever.

Whistler Blackcomb, where alpine skiing events will be held, is seeing its snowiest November ever. By mid-afternoon Tuesday, it had received 530 centimetres, smashing the old record of 416 centimetres.

Fog might be an issue in the lower lying Cypress Bowl area, where the snowboarding and freestyle skiing events will be held, said Phillips.

"The freezing level tends to be a little more elevated in an El Nino year, you tend to get more the rain, maybe you can't make snow as well, it doesn't accumulate and you could lose it with the balmy air," he said.

Tim Gayda, vice-president of sport for the city's Olympics organizing committee, known as VANOC, said Olympic organizers have planned for everything from too much to too little snow and are ready "for the worst either way."

"We'll keep making snow all the way up to the Games. In terms of losing snow down to the ground, it's extremely unlikely," he said.

Fog dissipates at night in the Cypress Bowl so a number of night events have been scheduled to address that concern, Gayda added.

Phillips said that while forecasters can look into their crystal ball, nobody knows yet what El Nino will mean for the Olympics.

That's because it doesn't show its true colours until December, January or February, and even in a warm record El Nino, there can be pretty cold weather, he said.

"It could very well turn out to be, because of El Nino, it may be one of the more comfortable Winter Games ever, with good amount of white gold there at Whistler but balmy, dry conditions at Vancouver," said Phillips.

The federal government has provided $9 million for Olympic weather forecasting. There's an extensive network of weather stations, wind monitors and a $1-million Doppler system.

"All of the weather observing equipment and the high tech-things such as the Doppler radar and the wind profiler are all operational and the data's being received in the forecast centre," said Al Wallace, regional director of Meteorological Services Canada.