Nagano Would Be Better Off With A Tarp Games Have Become A Meteorologist’s Dream

How they ever decided to hold the Olympics here is beyond me. This place is a weather laboratory. We have been hit with high winds, blizzard conditions, driving rain, thunder and lightning.

The only thing missing is a good earthquake. A volcano would be a nice touch, too.

On Friday night there was a gorgeous full moon. The sky was clear and the prospects for holding an actual ski race looked good.

Mariko Kusaka, a waitress at the Buttermilk restaurant, was not so impressed by the moon and the clear sky.

“Does the moon have a ring around it?” she asked.

Yup.

“Not good,” she said.

Not good at all. By this morning it was pouring. The rain forced the postponement of two races, the woman’s downhill and the men’s super-G. That pushed the number of weather postponements to six. And I’ve been lucky enough to be there for all six.

These Olympics are desperately in need of a tarp. The IOC should have required that the Nagano Organizing Committee build a dome big enough to hold the ski races in.

In Lillehammer four years ago the weather was frigid. At the alpine events it was near zero everyday with a wind whipping down from the Arctic Circle.

Visitors - mostly the media - complained about it being too cold at the Winter Olympics. But the Norwegians had an answer for those complaints. “There is no such thing as bad weather,” was the refrain, “only bad clothes.”

The Norwegians were wrong.

In Japan there is bad weather and wet clothes.

In December there was no snow here and the Japanese who micro-manage every aspect of life, found that they could not control the weather. How frustrating it must be for such control freaks not to be able to keep the clouds from dropping rain and snow on their Olympic party.

You walk into a department store in Japan and there are 15 women working behind the perfume counter. Every counter has a gang of workers. And that management model has been followed here at the Olympics.

In Nagano there are more than 20 full-time meteorologists. And they haven’t got a forecast right yet. Which means they’ll leave here when their work is done for jobs as TV weathermen.

The only person who has been able to predict the weather here is a man who has no weather expertise. He studies insects. For the past 15 years he has been studying the daily habits of the Japanese praying mantis. By watching how high up these insects climb trees to hibernate, he has been able to accurately predict the amount of snowfall for the Nagano region.

This year, when everyone was worried there would be no snow for the Olympics, he said there was nothing to worry about. He said there’d be heavy snow, but not until the last week in January.

This man has a doctorate from Tokyo University for his work. With the help of a translator I reached him by phone the other day. Surely he would be able to explain this crazy weather.

The translator dialed his phone number. She spoke to him for just a few minutes and then hung up shaking her head.

“He does not do press interviews,” she said, “and he doesn’t want his name associated with this.”

Who does?

Cold one day, hot the next. Rain, snow, thunder and lightning. The weather has contributed to a bad flu strain that has been running wild around the Olympics. On the door of the infirmary at the Main Press Center, there was this advice to flu victims: “No smoking, no drinking, no karaoke.”

Who feels like singing in this weather, anyway?

The bad weather has the ski racers scrambling around to find ways to stay in tip-top condition.

“We were going to do some dry-land training,” said women’s head coach Herwig Demschar after the women’s downhill was postponed on Friday, “but we can’t find any dry land.”

So they just sit around and wait for the weather to change. Which seems to happen every hour or so.

I could try going to the Zenkoji temple in Nagano and praying to the weather gods who seem intent on ruining the Olympics.

But now I think that will not be necessary.

I have found the source of this weather.

The Japanese are big on giving gifts. It’s a nice custom. Little gifts that have meaning, not big, extravagant gifts.

Friday, the night of the full moon, I was given this little doll. It is called a snow boy. It looks like a cross between a ghost and a snowman. And it has a little string attached to its head.

You are supposed to hang this snow boy outside your door. A local artist has made at least one of these snow boys each day since the Lillehammer Olympics ended. These snow boys hanging outside thousands of Japanese homes are supposed to bring good weather for the Olympics.

Obviously the snow boys are not getting the job done.

Something had to be done. After the disappointment of another rainout, I borrowed a pair of very sharp Japanese scissors and cut off the head of the beautiful snow boy.

Now, as I look out the window with the headless snow boy at my side, the sky appears to be getting brighter.

Let the Games begin.