The city is tucked onto the far edge of the continent, beaches on one side and the surrounding mountains about a 20-minute drive from downtown.
On Friday, Vancouver joins the ranks of Olympic cities, including its Canadian siblings Montreal and Calgary. Over the next two weeks people all over the world will get to see why the area is a mecca for outdoor enthusiasts everywhere.
“I’m scared that everyone is going to go there for the Olympics and want to move there for good, it’s so beautiful,” joked Capitals defenseman Shaone Morrisonn, a Vancouver native who owns a home just a 10-minute drive from BC Place, site of the Opening Ceremony.
With a city population of under 600,000 and a metropolitan area of around 2.1 million, Morrisonn hasn’t had to share his hometown with too many others. Vancouver is about the same size as American cities Portland and Cincinnati.
That love of the outdoors made Vancouver an ideal host for the Winter Olympics. But there’s a problem: a deteriorating snowpack and warmer-than-normal temperatures thanks to a strong El Nino.
“When Vancouver was awarded the Olympic Games, I guarantee you there was no forecast for an El Nino,” The Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore said. “There couldn’t have been, because it’s something that we see develop maybe six months out. That said, it’s not like Winter Olympics of the past have been privy to perfect snow, either.”
The Austrian military had to truck snow into Innsbruck in 1964. At Nagano in 1998, organizers worried about too much snow affecting their sports.
That’s not an issue at Whistler, the resort town 80 miles north of Vancouver and the site for alpine ski and bobsled events. But organizers are trucking snow from eastern British Columbia onto Cypress Mountain — only 17 miles from downtown and the site of snowboarding and freestyle and moguls skiing. Temperatures there could reach 50 degrees this weekend. Those aren’t ideal conditions. But no one can question the scenery.
