A Radar for Nowcasting Winter Weather for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics

Vancouver is the host city for the winter olympics in 2010. The alpine and nordic events will be staged at Whistler-Blackcomb mountains and the Callaghan Valley. These venues are characterized by coastal environments, and deep valleys. Nowcast problems include high winds, precipitation intensity and phase and visibility. Requirements for public safety and fair operations of the events include the nowcast time and spatial scales. A Doppler weather radar has been installed in the valley, at the junction of three critical valleys. User, siting and processing requirements are significantly different than for the rest of the national radar network. Unlike the rest of the network, the requirements for sensing are short range (< 60 km), minimize the cone of silence, maintain surveillance in the vertical and along the key transportation corridors. In terms of radar setup and signal processing, the key factors are the scan strategy, doppler notch filtering is critical, as well as pulse length and shape. First impressions are that the radar quality is very high and the meteorology of the valley flows is extremely challenging showing rapid changes on the 10-20 km and 10-20 min spatial and temporal scales as well as the ability to see up and downslope flows on Whistler Mountain harbinging a new ability for nowcasting winter weather in complex terrain.