Weather forecasting for the Winter Olympics is being handled by a unique government-university-private sector partnership among the National Weather Service, the University of Utah, and a Salt Lake City television station.

The Weather Service will be providing its standard forecasts, warnings, and winter weather statements, as well as briefings of public safety and emergency management officials. Meanwhile, at each of the five outdoor venues, teams of private meteorologists coordinated by KSL-TV in Salt Lake City will brief Olympic officials, venue managers, coaches and athletes, on specific weather conditions and forecasts for the individual sites.

Helping make all this possible is the University of Utah's Meteorology Department. They are coordinating weather observations from more than 200 sites in northern Utah. Plus, they developed a specialized computer model that's tailored to forecasting the weather in the complicated terrain of northern Utah.