The second women’s downhill training run for American Mikaela Shiffrin, Italian Sofia Goggia and other Alpine skiers has been canceled because of snowfall.
The men’s giant slalom race is still supposed to take place Sunday, Beijing time.
A downhill has faster speeds than the giant slalom and so is more dangerous to ski when visibility is poor.
Snow began falling Saturday at the Yanqing Alpine Skiing Center during the first women’s downhill practice session and continued into Sunday morning.
There is another downhill training scheduled for Monday ahead of Tuesday’s race.
Court to decide Russian skater’s fate
Russian figure skating superstar Kamila Valieva was at a practice session Sunday, hours before the Court of Arbitration for Sport was scheduled to meet to decide whether she’ll be allowed to compete.
The meeting of CAS is scheduled for 8:30 p.m. Sunday and a decision is expected sometime Monday, less than 24 hours before Valieva is scheduled to skate in the women’s short program at the Beijing Games.
Valieva has been allowed to practice since Monday, when a drug test she took in December was flagged for traces of a banned heart medication. That was the same day Valieva helped Russia win the team gold medal with a dynamic free skate in which she became the first woman to land a quad lutz in Olympic competition.
The practices have become increasingly uncomfortable, though, as Valieva continues to prepare with dozens of reporters and camera crews watching her every move. She briefly burst into tears during her Friday session.
The future of the Winter Olympics is under threat because of climate change, according to a new report from Britain’s Loughborough University.
The warning comes as Beijing prepares for the opening of the 2022 Games this week, the first time a city has hosted both the summer and winter events. It also will be the first Winter Olympics to use almost 100% artificial snow, with more than 100 snow generators and 300 snow-cannons working to cover the slopes.
Artificial snow
Zhangjiakou, which lies 200 kilometers northwest of Beijing, will host freestyle skiing and snowboarding, cross-country skiing and ski jumping. Despite the bitter cold – temperatures reached minus 17 degrees Celsius this week – it rarely snows.
Olympic site manager Jacques Fournier is in charge of the snow machines. “Here has no humidity, and it’s very dry, and there’s a lot of wind,” Fournier told Reuters. “So, in that kind of condition, the goal and the target is really to make the snow compact, and to prepare rapidly to not let it [be blown away] by the wind.”
Inherent dangers
Winter resorts have increasingly turned to artificial snow to make up for a lack of natural snowfall. However, a new report from Britain’s Loughborough University warns that athletes’ safety could be at risk.
“In sports like biathlon or cross-country skiing or any of the freestyle events where an athlete is flinging themself into the air flipping around and falling, you would want the surface to be a little softer. And the problem with artificial snow is that it’s about 70% ice, compared to natural snow which is about 30% ice. And so, the surface is much, much harder,” said report co-author Madeleine Orr, a sports ecologist at Loughborough University, in an interview with VOA.
Snow-melt
American snowboarder Taylor Gold is preparing for Beijing. During his first Winter Olympics, in the Russian resort of Sochi in 2014, he recalls the halfpipe melting.
“They were spraying some chemicals on it to try to get it to stay in shape. But if you go back and watch that event, it’s clear, it was really warm. It was not ideal for snowboarding,” Gold recently told Associated Press. “It makes me sad that we need so much man-made snow to sustain winter sports,” he added.
A worker shovels snow in preparation for freestyle ski and snowboard events at Genting Snow Park prior to the 2022 Winter Olympics, in Zhangjiakou, China, Jan. 31, 2022.
American downhill skier Lindsey Vonn, who won three Olympic golds until her retirement in 2019, has trained and competed all over the world. She says snow is becoming harder to track down. “You go to South America, where we use to train every summer, August, September. They’ve had no snow for several years in a row, like none,” Vonn told the Associated Press.
Unsuitable climates
Critics say the climates of both Sochi and Beijing are unsuitable to host the Winter Olympics. But even high altitude, mountain ski resorts that have traditionally hosted the games are at risk because of climate change.
“The northeast of the U.S. for example, and eastern Canada – we are losing significant amounts of snow there,” says Orr. “And then in places like the Rockies and the [European] Alps, we just don’t have quite as much as we used to. So, the challenge moving forward is going to be where can we put these events. And with the Winter Olympics, we’re already kind of there.”
Environmental damage
Orr says artificial snow also causes environmental damage.
“When you put artificial snow in a place that doesn’t have any natural snow at all, like Beijing, you’re putting a whole lot of water into a place where that soil and those plants are not expecting it. And previous research has shown that that can be damaging to local wildlife.”
“But we also expect that when you’re creating that much snow, the energy usage is extraordinary. The amount of water is extraordinary. In this Olympics we’re expecting 49 million gallons [185 million liters] of water to be used – and that’s if things go well. So, if they have a few hot days and need to create a little bit of extra snow to make up and compensate for some melt during the games, we could see that number rise above 50 million gallons [189 million liters],” Orr told VOA.
Carbon-neutral Olympics
The Chinese organizers insist the games will be carbon neutral. All venues are expected to be powered by renewable energy. Ice rinks will use natural CO2 technology for cooling, instead of ozone-damaging hydrofluorocarbons. The organizers say the latest snow machines use 20% less water.
Some athletes prefer artificial snow. “The snow is actually amazing, the man-made stuff. I think because of how cold it is, you have to be really aggressive with how you ride, but you just have to adapt,” said Zoi Sadowski-Synnott, a downhill snowboarder competing for New Zealand at the Beijing Games.
Olympic organizers also will have to adapt. The Loughborough University report warns that by 2050, fewer than half of the resorts that have hosted the Winter Olympics until now will have viable snowfall.
As Beijing prepares for the opening of the Winter Olympics this week, scientists are warning that the future of the games is under threat – because of climate change. Henry Ridgwell reports. Producer: Marcus Harton
A nor’easter with hurricane-force wind gusts battered much of the East Coast on Saturday, flinging heavy snow that made travel treacherous or impossible, flooding coastlines, and threatening to leave bitter cold in its wake.
The storm thrashed parts of 10 states, with blizzard warnings that stretched from Virginia to Maine. Philadelphia and New York saw plenty of wind and snow, but Boston was in the crosshairs. The city could get more than 61 centimeters of snow by the time it moves out early Sunday.
Winds gusted as high as 134 kph on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. More than 45 centimeters of snow had fallen by midafternoon on part of Long Island in New York, while Bayville, New Jersey, had 48 centimeters.
The wind scoured the ground bare in some spots and piled the snow into huge drifts in others.
A worker clears the sidewalk at East Pier in the East Boston neighborhood of Boston, Jan. 29, 2022.
Record snowfall possible
Forecasters watched closely for new snowfall records, especially in Boston, where the heaviest snow was expected later Saturday. The Boston area’s modern snowfall record is 70 centimeters, set in 2003.
New York City and Philadelphia were far from setting all-time records but still saw significant snowfall, with at least 19 centimeters in New York’s Central Park and at the Philadelphia airport.
Many flights at airports serving New York, Boston and Philadelphia were canceled Saturday, according to FlightAware. More than 4,500 flights were canceled across the U.S., though airports in the Northeast didn’t report evidence of mass strandings, given that the storm was anticipated and many airlines called off flights in advance.
Amtrak canceled all its high-speed Acela trains on the busy Boston-to-Washington corridor and canceled or limited other service.
In Boston, Dominic Torre was out driving his snow dump truck since the storm began overnight, picking up loads of plowed snow from the streets and dumping it in unused parking lots known as “snow farms.” It was about time for such a big storm, he said.
“You know, we were overdue,” he said. “It’s pretty hairy, you know, a lot of snow. A lot of snow, a lot of trips, a lot of loads. And it ain’t over yet. It ain’t done yet.”
Videos on social media showed wind and waves battering North Weymouth, south of Boston, flooding streets with a slurry of frigid water. Other videos showed a street underwater on Nantucket and waves crashing against the windows of a building in Plymouth.
More than 120,000 homes and businesses lost power in Massachusetts, with failures mounting. No other states reported widespread outages.
Xavier Martinez scrapes snow off his windshield during a storm in Providence, R.I., Jan. 29, 2022. A powerful nor’easter swept up the East Coast on Saturday, threatening to bury parts of 10 states under deep snow accompanied by coastal flooding and winds.
Climate change one factor
Climate change, particularly the warming ocean, probably influenced the strength of the storm, atmospheric researchers said.
Much warmer ocean waters “are certainly playing a role in the strengthening of the storm system and increased moisture available for the storm,” said University of Oklahoma meteorology professor Jason Furtado. “But it isn’t the only thing.”
The storm had two saving graces: Dry snow less capable of snapping trees and tearing down power lines, and its timing on a weekend, when schools were closed and few people were commuting.
Parts of 10 states were under blizzard warnings at some point: Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey, along with much of the Delmarva Peninsula in Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.
People make their way over the Williamsburg bridge during a snow storm, Jan. 29, 2022, in New York.
Blizzard conditions
The National Weather Service considers a storm a blizzard if it has snowfall or blowing snow, as well as winds of at least 56 kph that reduce visibility to a quarter-mile or less for at least three hours. In many areas, Saturday’s storm met those criteria.
Rhode Island, all of which was under a blizzard warning, banned all nonemergency road travel.
In West Hartford, Connecticut, a tractor-trailer jackknifed on Interstate 84, closing several lanes. Massachusetts banned heavy trucks from interstate highways.
Ocean City, Maryland, recorded at least 30 centimeters of snow. Maryland State Police tweeted that troopers had received more than 670 calls for service and responded to more than 90 crashes by midmorning.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul advised people to stay home and warned of below-zero windchills after the storm passes. The state had declared a state of emergency Friday evening.
“This is a very serious storm, very serious. We’ve been preparing for this. This could be life-threatening,” Hochul said. “It’s high winds, heavy snow, blizzard conditions — all the elements of a classic nor’easter.”
Snow-shoveling training
Hardy New Englanders took the storm in stride.
Dave McGillivray, race director for the Boston Marathon, jokingly invited the public to his suburban Boston home on Saturday for a free snow-shoveling clinic.
“I will provide the driveway and multiple walkways to ensure your training is conducted in the most lifelike situation,” he said.
Washington and Baltimore got some snow but were largely spared. The worst of the nor’easter was expected to blow by Sunday morning into Canada, where several provinces were under warnings.
