VANCOUVER, Jan. 11 (Xinhua) -- With one month to go before the Vancouver Winter Olympics, intensive operations to prepare the four outdoor competition venues for all weather scenarios are underway to ensure the optimum fields of play for the world's best winter athletes, the organizers claimed in a news release Monday.

    The preparation work involves years of planning, state-of-the-art snow making equipment, a fleet of snow grooming machines, dedicated mountain operations staff, the best ice and snow makers in the business, and advanced weather tracking technology provided by Environment Canada, according to the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC).

    The snow and ice making and weather preparedness are ongoing at Whistler Creekside, the Whistler sliding Centre, Whistler Olympic Pard/Whistler Paralympic Park and Cypress Mountain, where such outdoor events as snowboard, bobsleigh, ski jumping, alpine skiing, etc. will be held.

    With the current spell of unseasonably warm and wet weather in Vancouver, the pre-Games readiness of those outdoor venues remains a big concern.

    "Everyday we're making decisions and taking steps to deal with the weather we have or can see coming. We're confident these courses will be in world-class shape when the athletes start to arrive to practice in our venues in the first week of February," said Tim Gayda, VANOC's vice president of sport.

    He said that since the first snowfalls in Whistler and Cypress last fall they have been blowing snow and grooming the courses and stockpiling snow as a precaution.

    In Whistler, there are large amounts of natural snow, which have been mixed with artificial snow to "make a firm base that is perfect for racing", Gayda said, adding both competition courses at Whistler Creekside and at Whistler Olympic Park are currently in great shape.

    According to him, the Whistler Sliding Centre, with its artificial refrigeration, roof structures and shading system, is largely protected from any kind of weather that could possibly occur. "We're in a maintenance mode now with the ice preparation to make sure it's at its best in February," he said.

    At Cypress, the organizers were able to make substantial amount of snow using 21 million gallons of water and blanketed all of the competition courses with more than enough snow. With the recent warm weather and rain, "we're working even harder to protect the snow and we'll make more snow as soon as the temperature drops enough to do so," Gayda said.

    As weather is involved in every decision regarding making and stockpiling snow as well as transportation planning, Environment Canada is working hand-in-hand with VANOC in order to help the venues for any type of weather condition.

    Chris Doyle, an Environment Canada meteorologist and VANOC's manager of weather services, said that the decisions are based on "top-notch weather equipment and Environment Canada meteorologists who specialize in weather data crunching for the Games region."

    "All of this provides an invaluable real-time snapshot of what's happening at the outdoor venues and what Mother Nature has in store in the near future so that we can plan and take action," he added.

    Scientific expertise and state-of-the-art weather tracking equipment worth 13.4 million Canadian dollars have been made available for the Games by the Canadian government.