Weather whisperer Canadian weapon
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA— Athletes in outdoor sports have to be prepared for anything: Snow and rain, freezing cold that makes them wish they’d picked a summer sport, and warm spells that turn their field of play into slush.
All that and more has happened at past Winter Olympics. But here at the 2018 Games the weather woes, so far, have been all about the wind.
Strong, gusting winds turned the women’s snowboard slopestyle event into a crash-fest that was painful for athletes and spectators; filled cellphones with emergency texts warning people to stay indoors as concession stands and security tents were blown away at the skating venues on the coast; and postponed so many alpine ski events that Thursday featured nine medal events, which matched the most ever for a Winter Games.
Wind is something that Doug Charko, Team Canada’s chief weatherman, knows all about. The meteorologist started weather forecasting specifically for sports when he picked up a job with a sailing team in the 1997 America’s Cup, and wind is about all sailors care about — when it will blow, how strongly and from what direction. It was a steep learning curve.
“What they want is incredibly detailed and there’s no books written on it, and you couldn’t go up the street and ask the other guys who have done it because, of course, it’s a big secret and nobody shares,” Charko said in an interview from his home office in Regina.
That’s where he’s working to scour satellite data and track weather trends to send daily reports to help prepare the Canadians here. But all that wind knowledge he picked up forecasting for sailing and in several Summer Olympics doesn’t do much good at a Winter Games.
He can tell them it will be so windy that events may be cancelled — which he did — and that can help athletes prepare mentally for delays. That’s about it. There’s no special wax that helps cross-country skiers push into a headwind, or a different model of snowboard to help riders land on their feet in gusting winds.
“There is nothing you can do about the wind,” Charko said.
What team technicians do want from him — especially in the nordic skiing events, cross-country and biathlon — is every scrap of reliable information they can get about what the temperature and humidity will be during races, plus whether it will snow and, if so, how much and when.
“The temperature and humidity has a huge effect on how fast you can slide no matter what sport you’re looking at, bobsledders to skiers,” he said.
His forecasts help technicians in cross-country decide which skis Alex Harvey will clip into for his 15-kilometre race on Friday, and what variation of grinds, waxes and powders they’ll use to produce the fastest ski possible for the very narrow band of conditions he’ll face. If they get it wrong, it’ll be a disaster for him.
That’s why being a weatherman is much like being a ski technician — you only get noticed when you make a mistake. And this Olympics is harder for Charko to forecast than the last one in the balmy spring-like weather found in Sochi.
“When it’s really warm it’s easy to call, but it was awful conditions for the competition, the poor ski techs, it was just slush. I remember one of the women’s cross-country races they were racing in shirt sleeves,” Charko said. “Where it gets tricky in the winter is when you’re in that -5C-to-zero range because that’s when snow temperature is very critical. Get above or below — 3C and the water content on the surface really increases, so that’s where you really want to get it right.”
And what about that howling wind that’s been front and centre at these Games?
“That was the worst of it.”