Winter Olympics without snow?

The world’s eyes will be on?Vancouver on Friday as the city hosts the 21st Winter Olympic Games.
More than 80 nations will be taking part in as many events in just about every sport you can think of involving ice or snow. But, as the opening ceremonies approach, one question remains; where the heck is all the snow?
The current 14 day trend for Vancouver has the temperature hovering around eight degrees for the first rainy week of the Games, before climbing up to a positively mild and sunny 12 degrees by Feb. 22. This shouldn’t wreak that much havoc on the Canadian men’s or women’s curling rinks, both in action that day, but it could cause some undue stress on organizers of the freestyle skiing events.
By now I’m sure you’ve seen the trucks and helicopters hauling snow to Cypress mountain, which will be the home to many ski and snowboard events.
If organizers are looking for some last-minute snow to touch up the slopes before Friday’s opening ceremonies, they should turn their eyes southward where a blizzard has given places such as the American Capital a little excess precipitation.
The wintery blast, considered the worst in 90 years, provided ammunition to hundreds of people who gathered in Washington, D.C. for a massive snowball fight, while also giving ammunition to those who oppose the idea of global warming.
And of course, I’m sure there are plenty of folks around Bruce County who wouldn’t mind helping out those poor souls out west by offering up a little of our own homegrown white fluff.
The snow problem is a big one, but it’s just the latest unexpected cost in a long series of add-ons that have led to the Vancouver Winter Olympics becoming the most costly in history.
Calls for heightened security after the recent ‘underwear bomber’ scare have ensured that during the Games, the military presence in Vancouver will be the largest it has been since the Second World War. The total cost of security is more than the Vancouver Organizing Committee’s initial assessment of what the Olympics as a whole would cost.
These ballooning costs have also worked to turn the international spotlight towards the darker side of Vancouver — the Downtown Lower Eastside, Canada’s poorest urban neighbourhood.
Just in case you’re curious, forecasts for Pyeongchang, South Korea, which was the first runner up in voting for the location of the 2010 Winter Olympics, show snow on Friday with a low of minus three degrees. Salzburg, Austria, which came in third, looks forward to snow for the rest of the week with consistent lows of between minus six and minus four.