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Russia's chief weather forecaster: Sochi will have enough snow for Olympics

Snow won't be necessary for the indoor events at the Bolshoi Ice Palace. (The Asahi Shimbun/Getty Images)

The Bolshoi Ice Palace (The Asahi Shimbun/Getty Images)

Russia's chief weather forecaster, Roman Vilfand, vowed Sochi will have enough snow for the Winter Olympics in February, he told The Associated Press on Friday.

Two test events were cancelled in Sochi last February because of a lack of snow and/or rainy weather, leading to concerns about a snowless Olympics in the resort city on the Black Sea that is in the only sub-tropical region of Russia.

Plan B was to store 450,000 cubic meters of last year's snow and install what organizers called Europe's biggest snow-making system.

SPORTS AND TECHNOLOGY: Sochi's snow contingency plan

But Vilfand, the director of the Russian Meteorological Office, believes those measures won't be necessary, as the current snow cover in the mountains above Sochi is already 20 inches, which is unusually high for this time of year.

He believes that even a warm and rainy month of January won't erode the snow base.