Climate Change Olympics

When it comes to weather and this year's Olympics everyone is talking about how warm it's been in Vancouver, and how little snow, if any, is on the ground to support the wintry-themed event. The Northeast Quadrant blogged about it well before major news outlets really drilled the story home, and even today Accuweather.com posted a headline "Olympic Weather Not Very Wintry."

Well Vancouver, you should feel lucky you're on the leading edge of what the future has in store for the Winter Games. XXI could be worse...

A Snowless Winter Olympics!?

The 2010 Winter Olympics are feeling the affects of Old Man Winter's Canadian hiatus, and Mother Nature is surely not cooperating either.

As spring flowers bloom early and birds start to nest around balmy Vancouver, Olympic officials there have been forced to put snow emergency contingency plans into place.

Vancouver, the host city of the February 12 – 28 Winter Games, has barely seen any snow this winter and it's too warm to make man-made snow. So what now? Well, starting this week hundreds of chartered fleets of helicopters will be flying in thousands of tons of snow to area ski resorts. But with air temperatures hovering well above the freezing mark, how long will that snow last?

The last time a lack of snow forced a host city into such drastic action was in 1964, for the Games in Innsbruck, Austria. Olympics historians say the problems in Vancouver beg the question, 'Are we going to have to re-think where we put the Winter Olympics because of global warming?'

To put it into perspective, check out the above photo. Where's the snow!?! Doesn't look like the Winter Olympics to me!