The tickets have been sold, the venues constructed and the athletes selected to compete at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. All of Canada is ready for its long-awaited moment in the international spotlight. There's only one thing missing:

The snow.

Unseasonably warm temperatures have left Vancouver looking a lot more as if it's preparing for a summer Olympics -- photos of bare mountainsides and blooming flowers have appeared in the local media -- and seemingly threatened the quality of the competition in snowboarding and freestyle skiing scheduled to take place at nearby Cypress Mountain.

Meteorologists do not expect any significant snowfall before the Games begin Feb. 12, either.

Already, the area has endured its warmest January since record-keeping at Vancouver International Airport began in 1937, according to Environment Canada, with an average daily temperature of 44.8 degrees and an average high of nearly 50 degrees. "Shockingly warm" is how one forecaster described it, with the warming effect of an El Niño weather pattern to blame."

The heat wave isn't expected to affect the skiing events scheduled for the Whistler Blackcomb Ski Resort farther north of the city, where nearly 32 feet of snow already has fallen at a higher elevation.

But at Cypress Mountain, whose top elevation closer to the city is only slightly higher than that of Salt Lake City, the concerns have grown.

The mountain was shut down to the public earlier this month because the warm weather and rain were threatening the integrity of the courses for events such as freestyle aerials and moguls, snowboardcross, skicross and snowboarding's halfpipe and parallel giant slalom.

Organizers and International Olympic Committee officials have insisted they will have the courses ready in top condition, mostly by hauling snow down from higher elevations on a neighboring mountain. Workers had stockpiled much of that snow by running 35 snow-making guns around the clock since November.

"We've made great progress in preparing the venue, thanks to our team that's been working night and day to deliver on the contingency plan we had ready," said Tim Gayda, the organizing committee's vice president of sport.

Organizers said workers have used snowcats and dump trucks to haul more than 300 truckloads of snow and nearly 1,100 bales of straw to the competition venue. The bales -- most of which were airlifted by helicopter -- will be used to replace packed snow as a base, and to construct the features on the snowboardcross and skicross courses.

Then, they will be covered with a layer of snow.

Officials went on the offensive last week to convince skeptics that the venue will be ready -- and events will not be moved.

The International Ski Federation approved the course preparations, and organizers created a slideshow and video footage to depict a wintry scene. IOC President Jacques Rogge told Canadian reporters in a conference call from Switzerland that "the field of play is absolutely impeccable and ready for competition," according to the Vancouver Sun newspaper.

The ski federation "is confident that with the current amount of snow on the mountain, and the snow saving measures that have been taken, VANOC will be able to create a world-class venue for our snowboard events during the 2010 Olympic Winter Games," said Marcel Looze, the federation's snowboard race director.

The problem was not unforeseen.

Winter weather around Vancouver is known to be warm and wet, often with more rain than snow causing slushy conditions. In fact, Vancouver is believed to be the warmest city ever to host a Winter Olympics -- though it's hardly the first host city to worry about the weather.

Organizers of the 1998 Nagano Games in Japan worried about a lack of snow in the months before the games, only to have heavy snow force the cancellation of some events. The notorious inversion gloomily shrouded Salt Lake City just as visitors were arriving for the 2002 Salt Lake Games, but cleared out just in time for the competition.

In any case, moguls skier Shannon Bahrke of Salt Lake City said she can't worry about it.

"As winter athletes, we are accustomed to constant changes in weather and course conditions," the former silver medalist said in an e-mail. "We are used to snow storms, low light, bad snow conditions, etc. All I can do is focus on the things that I can control and that is getting myself the most mentally and physically prepared I can be to perform my best at the Olympics."

Bahrke added that she grew up skiing the resorts around Lake Tahoe, "where the snow can be awesome one minute and rained upon the next. So let's just say that I am going to be prepared for anything."

mcl@sltrib.com