Extended Abstract

Observations of Precipitation Processes at the Vancouver 2010Winter Olympic GamesPaul Joe 1 , George Isaac 1 , Stewart Cober 1 , Jocelyn Mailhot 1 , Jason Milbrandt 1 ,Chris Doyle 1 , Ismail Gultepe 1 , Edwin Campos 1 , Ron Stewart 2 and Teresa Fisico 2Introduction1 Environment Canada, 2 University of ManitobaEmail: paul.joe@ec.gc.caThe Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games were conducted in February and March2010. The Nowcasting Working Group (NWG) of the World Weather ResearchProgram (WWRP) of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) promoted theScience of Nowcasting of Olympic Weather (SNOW-V10) Research DevelopmentProject (RDP). The main goal of SNOW-V10 was to accelerate the development ofwinter nowcasting in complex terrain. Nowcasting weather elements includedprecipitation type, intensity, wind, visibility and low cloud which are all critical to supportthe forecasting/nowcasting for safety and security of the public, athletes and organizersbut also for fair conditions for the competitions. There is both an operational andresearch component to the forecasting and to monitoring network (Joe et al, 2010). Thefocus of this paper is the precipitation processes revealed by remote sensingobservations. In-situ and model observation are or will be discussed elsewhere.The Domain and the Observation NetworkThere are five distinct areas of interest (see Fig. 1). The Vancouver urban area hasmany indoor venues and is therefore of minor concern. Cypress Mountain is on theNorth Shore of the Fraser Valley and site of many of the freestyle events. It is on theedge of the ocean (actually Georgia Strait) and the terrain rises sharply creating strongweather gradients. The Creekside of Whistler Mountain is the location of the Alpineevents. It is about 100km from the ocean and is of prime concern. The sliding eventsare conducted on the west side of Blackcomb Mountain. The fifth site is the CallaghanValley which is the site of the Nordic events. Each site has its own micro-climate, itsown forecast and nowcast issues.Figure 1: Location of the main forecast areasfor the Vancouver Olympic Games. From topto bottom and left to right, they are theCallaghan Valley (Nordic), Blackcomb (SlidingCentre), Whistler (Creekside), CypressMountain (Freestyle), Vancouver (IndoorVenues).Fig. 2 shows in visual detail the researchinstruments deployed to support theSNOW-V10 project which focuses onresearch in precipitation, wind and-79-